TANZANIA – Tanzania is set to receive funding worth US$57 Billion from the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children, and Adolescents Health (GFF) to improve access and quality of maternal and child health care delivery in the country.
The Global Financing Facility was launched in 2005 as a multi-donor trust fund housed at the World Bank dedicated to developing and implementing prioritized national health plans to scale up access to affordable, quality care for women, children, and adolescents.
The multi-stakeholder global partnership committed to ensuring all women, children and adolescents can survive and thrive also works with countries to maximize the use of domestic financing and external support for sustainable health results.
GFF plans to approve US$57 billion in funding to boost access to maternal, neonatal and child health services as well as strengthen community capacity to seek healthcare in Tanzania which will significantly improve referral systems and provision of healthcare.
Tanzania Health Minister Ummy Mwalimu said GFF had previously offered financial aid for maternal and child health worth US$40 billion for the financial year 2015/2016, noting that Tanzania has made progress in providing maternal health service and maternal and child mortality is on the decline.
Tanzanian Government is also working to strengthen access to health services by continuing to construct health infrastructure, employ more health personnel and increase medical equipment and reagents in the next five years.
Health Minister Ummy Mwalimu observed that Tanzania has hit major milestones in primary healthcare but the country still has a long way to go to ensure that its citizens have access to high-quality healthcare as she requested donors continue to work with the Tanzanian government.
The government has achieved significant progress in reducing maternal mortality and morality for instance statistics show that 80 per cent of babies are being born in health facilities whereas the number of under-five children who are vaccinated now stands at 98 per cent.
In addition, Tanzania has increased its efforts to ensure that health services are brought closer to people by building infrastructure such as hospitals and health centers across the country which has highly contributed to the reduction of mortality rate.
The additional funding announcement for Tanzania’s maternal and child health care was declared during the 14th Conference on Maternal and Child Health Donors where stakeholders in the health sector discuss various issues on well-being and health including the strengthening of primary health care.
Stakeholders also discussed the current challenges and gains made through GFF funding and how best to increase human resources at health facilities particularly providing specialized training to health workers and increasing their resources to improve services provided at primary health care facilities.
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