CONTRACTING BETWEEN FAITH-BASED HEALTH CARE ORGANIZATIONS AND THE PUBLIC SECTOR IN AFRICA

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Notes

1. MMI is an international network composed of a private not-for-profit (PNFP) organizations working in the field of international health. The network's key strategic approach is to strengthen the health system as a whole. Strengthening the PNFP health sector is an essential aspect in this endeavor. For MMI, the contracting of faith-based health facilities is a means to an end—the end being the development of effective and equitable health care delivery systems via the integration of faith-based facilities in public health systems.

2. Portions of this article summarize findings which are reported more extensively in Boulenger, Keugoung, and Criel (2009).

3. Uganda Protestant Medical Bureau (UPMB), Uganda Catholic Medical Bureau (UCMB), and Uganda Muslim Medical Bureau (UMMB).

Additional information

Delphine Boulenger, currently a freelance consultant, was at the time of this study based at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp. A historian with additional education in public health, Boulenger has been working since 2007 around the subject of the relationship between public health authorities and faith-based organizations and hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa. She has also worked for several years in the field of supply and distribution of essential medicines and medical supplies in developing countries.

Françoise Barten is a senior scientist at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in the department of Primary and Community Care, and has been awarded the title of profesora honoraria at the School of Public Health of Nicaragua (1995), the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad Mayor de San Simon, Cochabamba (2000), and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua (2005). Her interests are in health equity and sustainable development.

Bart Criel is an associate professor and head of the Health Financing Unit, Department of Public Health at the Institute of Public Health in Antwerp. His main areas of work are the study of health care delivery systems and of systems of social protection in health in low- and middle-income countries. He is involved in coaching a number of action-research projects in the field of health care delivery at the district level in various sub-Saharan African countries.