• Abolish user fees?

Abolish user fees?

This brief from Save the Children Fund argues that user fees for basic health care, paid in the poorest countries around the world, are in reality "killer bills". It argues that abolishing user fees and covering the relatively small cost of abolition would immediately save the lives of nearly a quarter of a million children under five. The effect of user fees is that children and their families often do not go to health clinics when they are sick. When they do go and have to pay, they are forced further into poverty and sometimes have to go without food. Some families also remove children from school in order to pay for health care.

The brief calls on the G8 to stop making user fees a condition (implicit or explicit) for their support to poor countries, and instead allow governments to judge for themselves whether user fees are an appropriate health financing mechanism and plan their health services accordingly. It concludes that the UK Government should take a lead by clarifying its own position on user fees, and using its presidencies of the G8 and EU to influence other rich governments and demonstrate that the Millennium Development Goal for child health is not just empty rhetoric.

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