Reducing the Burden and Cost of Malaria through an Innovative Third-Party Payer Mechanism in Cameroon

Malaria represents a major risk in Cameroon, especially for children and pregnant women with 11’200 deaths in 2018, 51% of which are children under five. There has been a “free health care” policy in place for several years for children under five, but it shows weaknesses and, overall, out-of-pocket payments are still relatively high. The National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) and the BACKUP Health Programme team in Cameroon conceptualised a project aiming to improve access to malaria healthcare and increase transparency of healthcare funding through close monitoring. The Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) was mandated to carry out a costing study on actual healthcare costs related to Malaria and based on the results, to design a pilot project for malaria care coverage in Cameroon within the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) strategy