Review Mutuelle de Santé

SENATE HAS requested government to set up an independent organ to manage the country’s community-based health insurance scheme (Mutuelle de Santé) to improve its services. This is contained in a report by the Senatarial Committee on Social Affairs and Human Rights.The scheme is choking under the weight of debt owed to healthcare providers and poor management. This request re-enforces earlier allegations from beneficiaries of the scheme, who have in the past complained that access to healthcare under the scheme is becoming a nightmare. They accused some health facilities of denying them healthcare services citing delayed payment of funds.Government should handle the issue raised in the report with the urgency it deserves. The report follows an assessment by the Senatarial Committee on Social Affairs and Human Rights and Petitions of the scheme’s performance across the country between November 2012 and January 2013.The beneficiaries of Mutuelle de Santé are the poor. Their health needs entirely depend on this scheme. If the scheme does not address their plight, then it ceases to fulfil the objective for which it was established.The report by senatorial committee notes that the scheme has issues in both mobilisation of funds from the general public and the disbursement of the funds to healthcare providers, a situation that is confirmed by Mutuelle’s current huge debt.This calls for revamping of the scheme to ensure that in the future it serves better. Indeed, having a national organ that coordinates the scheme can help since it remains difficult to address the scheme’s issues with its current administrative structure.Putting in place an independent body established by law is a starting point that could see the turn around of the struggling scheme.

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Review Mutuelle de Santé