Health Financing and Universal Health Care in Africa : Is Social Health Insurance an Appropriate Remedy?

The goal of every health system is (or ought to be) universal health care. This goal is reflected in obligations nations have assumed under a number of international, regional and domestic legal and policy frameworks. In general, these frameworks provide broad guidelines, leaving each country at liberty to institutionalize whatever strategy that would propel it toward universal care, given its particular socioeconomic circumstances. This underscores the recent trend in Africa toward social health insurance (SHI) as a system of financing medical services in affected countries. But whether SHI represents the most efficient path to actualizing health for all in the region remains an unanswered question. This paper explores this question