Resource Type: Report
Authors: Jonathan Cali and Carlos Avila
Published: February 2016

Resource Description:

The government of Botswana is committed to achieving universal health coverage and assuming a higher share of HIV/AIDS and other health spending, even though long-term economic growth prospects are less optimistic than in the past. To guide its path, the government is developing a health financing strategy that will increase efficiency, ensure financial sustainability, and promote an effective mix of public and private mechanisms for health financing and service provision. The government created a multi-stakeholder Health Financing Technical Working Group (HFTWG) to lead the development of the strategy and requested support from the Health Finance and Government Project (HFG), a global initiative funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). HFG conducted this landscape analysis to inform the process by compiling the findings of previous studies, providing information on Botswana’s fiscal space for health, health expenditures, funding gap for health, and health system performance, and outlining policy initiatives for addressing the priorities of the HFTWG.

The first draft of this analysis was presented to the HFTWG in February 2016 to assist the attempt to reach a consensus on policy options for further study. Representatives from the following institutions were present: Ministry of Health (HPDME and Finance Unit), UNAIDS, UNICEF, BOMAID, South View, NBFIRA, USAID, Ministry of Finance (Macroeconomics, Pensions and Insurance), Institute of Development Management (IDM), WHO, UNDP, University of Botswana School of Public Health, Careena Health, Ministry of Local Government, Associated Fund Administrators (BPOMAS and Pula). The results of the meeting are presented in this draft.