Factors affecting enrollment into the community health fund in Magu District

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.