Abstract:
Following Health Sector Reforms, Tanzania put in place different strategies towards
improvement of its deteriorating health sector. These strategies among others included
introduction of a Community Health Fund (CHF). This fund was first piloted in Igunga District
in 1996.
Despite predicted advantages of the CHF, the enrollment is not as high as expected and more
than 10 years experience of the fund has not improved coverage. Different reasons have been
pointed out as the causes of the failure of the policy. Magu District is also faced by the problem
of low enrollment into CHF.
A descriptive cross sectional community based study, aimed to determine factors which affect
enrollment into the Community Health Fund was conducted in Magu District. The objectives of
the study were
1. To determine knowledge and attitudes towards community health fund benefits
11. To assess community involvement in the CHF management
III. To determine the communities preference on health service providers
The findings of the study show that maj ority of the population in Magu District are peasants and
they prefer government health facilities as their primary health service provider. Despite these
facts which are in favour of Community Health Fund, Magu suffer from very low enrollment
(only 0.9% households are members) mainly due to the fact that majority of the population have
not received proper information on Community Health Fund and the community involvement is
therefore very poor.
The study recommends that the district council should improve collaboration between health
workers and village leaders so that village leaders can be involved fully in awareness campaign,
increases in community involvement in the management of CHF and to increase quality of
service provided by government facilities.
