Ministry of Health and Child Care has engaged the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Finance and Economic Development over its dependence on donor funding to run operations.
Deputy Director of Reproductive Health in the Ministry, Dr Margaret Nyandoro told the Committee that having domestic public finance to support would help the department play its role well.
“We have got insufficient resources, which limit service availability for quality of care,” Nyandoro said.
“We are over reliant on out of pocket payment which creates barriers to access and limits equity, which means if somebody doesn’t have the resources to be able to access they are not going to be able to access that.”
The family planning commodities, which are in charge of the Health Ministry is 100% dependent on Health.
One of the sectors in the Ministry of Health, the Family Planning, is 100% dependent on donor funding according to the Deputy Director.
“As things stand, we can hardly exert that to the degree that we would like to because we have not been given the domestic allocation to do that,” Nyandoro said.
“So we depend on our benevolent partners who will say ‘I am only able to do this and that’s what is available from this year to this year.”
“So it really puts us in a very awkward situation in terms of trying to just be efficient,” Nyandoro went on.
In response to the Health Ministry, the Portfolio Committee promised to advocate for a budgetary support pertaining health.
Chairman of the Portifolio Felix Mhona said his committee is better placed to advocate for the budgetary support in Parliament.
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