Health is among the key concerns of poor people. Health problems are a major cause for families to remain or become poor. In general, provision of health services is extremely skewed towards the richer segments of the population.

Health encompasses the right to access the highest attainable standard of health care quality services for poor people, including the specific needs of minority groups and women. A key reason for SNV to adopt health as one of its priority sectors is its direct positive influence on education, employment and income and therefore its impact on poverty reduction.

SNV supports initiatives that increase access of poor people to health services, through:

• Pro-poor targeting: stimulate governments to focus on the disadvantaged and vulnerable groups in society, by concentrating on poor regions, the main diseases and by developing appropriate services through primary health care centres and mutual insurance systems. 
• Strengthening actual provision of health services by improving communication and collaboration of the different actors involved; to make sure that all understand each others roles and responsibilities and that they work together. 
• Establishing accountability for services delivered and their contribution to improve health of the population. For instance by encouraging community health associations (with participation of women) to co-manage primary health care centres.
• Developing effective coalitions that bring poor people and their concerns as well as effective practices into the policymaking and regulatory processes (through advocacy, representation, knowledge brokering etc.).

To give an example of the kind of possible coalitions: in Mali responsibility for primary health care is transferred from the central level to the municipalities. The NGO that is responsible for managing primary health care centres lobbied together with the Malian Association of Municipalities to make this decentralisation in health care more effective.

SNV works in primary health care in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Cameroon. Read more on the health situation in these countries and SNV’s positioning choices.