Community attitude towards Community Health Fund on Health Security in Kalambo District, Rukwa Region, Tanzania

Abstract

Community Health Fund (CHF) is one among health insurance schemes found in Tanzania. It was established in 1996 with the aim of improving the health of people who work in informal sectors. However, since its formulation, it has not performed well; the majority of HHs are not members, and some members are withdrawing from the scheme. The overall objective was to assess the attitude of community members towards the importance of CHF for health security. Specifically, the paper assesses the attitude towards CHF interventions among members and non-members of CHF and compares the attitude between members and non-members of CHF on health security. Cross sectional research design was used in this study. Simple random sampling technique using the lottery method was employed to select 354 respondents. Data were collected using a household questionnaire survey, Focus Group Discussions guide, Key Informant Interviews checklist and documents’ reviews. Descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and content analysis were used to analyze the data. The findings show that CHF has inclusive benefits to its members as it covers costs of health treatment rather than paying money every time they attend medical treatments. Furthermore, the attitude towards CHF among members and non-members was accounted for 9.3% and 51.9 negative, 2.3% and 4.1 neutral and 88.4 and 44.0 positive. This indicates that the majority of people in the study area had a positive attitude towards CHF services. Thus, the study concludes that a great proportion of members of CHF in Kalambo District have positive attitude towards CHF intervention while the majority of non-members have negative attitude towards CHF intervention because they were not aware of it due to lack of knowledge. It is recommended that the government should mainstream CHF intervention to all communities so that non-members can join the scheme and hence get better health services.  Also, the study recommends that the CHF service providers should put more emphasis on sensitising communities against negative attitudes from non-members of CHF.