Community health fund (CHF) in Tanzania : predictors of and barriers to enrolment

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-103).
Most low-income countries have not been able to fulfill the health care needs of the poor, and especially the rural population. Budgetary and other resource constraints in the health sector have been the major causes of this failure. Tanzania, like any other poor country is faced with challenges in health care financing, such that it cannot provide adequate cushion against health care costs for the majority of its population. One response to this situation was the health care financing reforms which among others saw the introduction of voluntary Community Health Fund (CHF) in 1996. The aim of the CHF was to mobilize resources through collection prepayments from households on a voluntary basis to fund primary health care for people in the informal sector operating in rural areas. However, CHF membership (enrollment) has been reported to be below the targeted coverage of 85% of the population living in rural areas. The percentage of households joining CHF has been ranging from 4% to 18% in various districts. This low enrolment prompted the need to study the predictors of and barriers to enrolment in CHF.