Sustainable financing for vaccination towards advancing universal health coverage in the WHO African region: The strategic role of national health insurance

ABSTRACT

There is a growing political interest in health reforms in Africa, and many countries are choosing national health insurance as their main financing mechanism for universal health coverage. Although vaccination is an essential health service that can influence progress toward universal health coverage, it is not often prioritized by these national health insurance systems. This paper highlights the potential gains of integrating vaccination into the package of health services that is provided through national health insurance and recommends practical policy actions that can enable countries to harness these benefits at population level.

KEYWORDS:

• Vaccination
• Africa
• national health insurance
• universal health coverage
• childhood
• health benefit package

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contributions

AAA conceptualized the article. AAA, RIJ, IDM, TAE, DN, and CSW reviewed and edited all the drafts. CSW supervised the work.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.