Mozambique invests around US$30 in health care per citizen

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Mozambique invests around US$30 in health care per citizen

6:01 CAT | 14 Jul 2023

Photo: AIM

Mozambique currently invests around US$30 dollars in health expenses per citizen [per year], reveals a study by health sector organisation ThinkWell, cited by AIM on Thursday (13July).

This value puts Mozambique above countries like Angola, for example, which spends around US$100 per citizen on health care but has a lower coverage rate.

The executive director of ThinkWell, Salomão Lourenço, explains that Mozambicans do not have to pay large sums of money to access health care, unlike in countries like Angola, where citizens must have money to pay for health care.

“When that happens [payment as a condition for having health care], the results in terms of effective coverage are low, because people don’t have the means,” Lourenço explains.

Hence, according to the source, investment in the health sector is generally important to prevent citizens from facing catastrophic expense, such as where citizens spend an amount equal to or greater than 10% of their budgets on health care.

The study was presented in Maputo on Wednesday (12-07) during a panel discussion on Health Financing for Universal Coverage, following preliminary dialogues on the 10th and 11th of July 2023, which preceded the national dialogue now underway in Maputo.

Lourenço highlighted as challenges and areas of intervention those where the health sector lacks infrastructure funding: equipment, human resources, medicines and medical supplies.

“When we look at the infrastructure component and, above all, at the inhabitant/health unit ratio, we can see that we are almost at half of what would be recommended,” he said.

“Also, the theoretical radius measuring the distance that the citizen has to travel to find the nearest health unit is below the standard,” he adds.

Medicines and health items, cited as one of the biggest challenges of the sector, were also among points discussed as part of a presentation on the difficulties of access to health care for people with disabilities presented by Farida Gulamo, Chairperson of the Association of Disabled People in Mozambique (ADEMO).

Source: AIM