Supporting Community Health Financing
Supporting Community Health Financing
Building capacity for resource mobilization is at the center of the Government of Benin’s (GOB) decentralization strategy for improving the health and well-being of the people of Benin. The Fonds d’appui au développement des communes (FADeC) is a tool created by the GOB to support this strategy and attests to the government’s strong commitment. The FADeC is a mechanism that transfers resources from the government to the local level, and one of its objectives is to provide communes with the necessary funds to carry out health activities. Communes, under the leadership of the mayor, are responsible for planning, implementing, and monitoring the FADeC. FADeC budget planning must respond to bottlenecks that hinder community health, including insufficient accountability of the communal council for health issues (particularly community health issues) and a lack of collaboration between the communal councils and the médecins chefs de poste. To support budget oversight within communes, the USAID-funded Integrated Health Services Activity (IHSA) held several meetings with communal councils on community health performance challenges during its first year of implementation. IHSA also advocated for an alignment of FADeC allocations.