Health Insurance For The Poor In Africa

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Also Included In: Aid / Disasters
Article Date: 15 Jan 2008 - 0:00 PDT

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The Department for Cooperative Studies initiated cooperation with Universities in Ghana, Malawi and Botswana

A new research project at the University of Cologne investigates a promising approach to reduce poverty. Similar to the way low-income people could improve their living conditions through access to microcredit and savings, affordable health insurance can avert risks of illnesses.

The research project will analyse how access to proper insurance for all can be reached successfully.

Private insurance products hardly exist for the rural and urban poor and in cases where they do exist they are not affordable for them. Public Social Insurance Services are mostly insufficient and exclude people working in the informal sector. Nine out of ten people in Sub-Sahara Africa therefore do not have any access to health or accident insurance. They have to pay tremendously high fees for treatment, medical care and hospitalisation out of pocket. Especially those people living below the poverty line (more than 40% in Sub-Saharan Africa) have to take out loans, dissolve their savings or sell essential resources to pay for their treatment. Therefore, many are not in the position to make use of the required services at all. In fact, many people fall into poverty due to illness and treatment costs.

The concept of micro health insurance (see below), tries to overcome this vicious circle of poverty and illness. The Department for Cooperative Studies at the University of Cologne has already worked on concepts to improve the access to affordable and qualitative health services in developing countries for several years. In line with this, the EU funded research project "Pro MHI Africa EU-African university network to strengthen community-based micro health insurance" has just commenced. This project will be conducted in collaboration with universities in Ghana, Malawi and Botswana within the next two years. The university network will analyse micro health insurance units in the cooperating countries and give academic attendance. On the basis of scientific outcomes, the university network plans to introduce a common micro insurance diploma to prepare students to become policy makers for the expanding (micro-) insurance markets within their respective countries and to qualify them as experts for micro health insurance.

Hans Jürgen Rösner, Professor for Social Policy, Cooperative Studies and Health Economics, acclaimed the new research project as follows: "Micro health insurance is an important tool against poverty in developing countries. It constitutes specific self-help potentials of the target groups and can therefore correct the deficiencies of the health sector."

UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE, UNIVERSITÄT ZU KOLN
Universität zu Köln / University of Cologne
Albertus-Magnus-Platz
http://www.uni-koeln.de

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