Management Sciences for Health, Beninese Government Continue Partnership with USAID to Strengthen Benin’s Health System

Arlington, VA—April 3, 2024—Management Sciences for Health (MSH) today announced it will continue its longstanding partnership with the Government of Benin and USAID with a new project to unlock the potential of Benin’s own resources to improve its population’s health.   

The five-year project will address health system weaknesses in the public and private health sectors defined in Benin’s National Health Policy by strengthening leadership, management, accountability, and governance and bolstering human resources for health, eLearning, and information exchanges to increase the availability and use of data for decision making. 

MSH has assembled a strategic and primarily local consortium of partners and a women-led, all Beninese team to lead key areas, including expanding national health insurance, engaging private providers, and facilitating providers’ access to financial solutions. 

“We have designed private-sector financing solutions for this activity that we never implemented at such a level of complexity or scale in the past—a testament to our ability to drive innovation by responding and adjusting to the dynamic challenges and opportunities that countries experience,” said Patrick Pascal Saint Firmin, MSH’s Principal Technical Advisor and Cluster Lead for Health Financing. 

Despite making progress, Benin’s health system continues to face significant challenges, including unevenly skilled health workers across rural and urban communities, high out‐of‐pocket payments, and women’s lack of decision making power to seek care and inform the design of gender‐responsive services.  

In addition to facilitating providers’ access to financial solutions and data for decision making, the activity will work to reduce the barriers faced by vulnerable populations when they need to access services. 

“We recently concluded a successful collaboration with the Government of Benin and USAID, but more work remains. This new project will empower our Beninese partners to make systemic changes at a new level, particularly in the areas of health financing and human resources, whose success we know highly depends on local expertise,” said Marian W. Wentworth, President and CEO of MSH. “We look forward to contributing our own technical knowledge and key relationships across the development sector to make sure this effort results in increased quality, availability, and affordability of health services to everyone in Benin.” 

The activity builds on the success of the USAID Integrated Health Services Activity, which MSH led between 2018 and 2023 in the departments of Alibori, Atacora, Ouémé, and Plateau to improve the accessibility and quality of health services for women and children. 

More information about MSH’s work in Benin is available here.