Market Analysis Summary
A good level of medical treatment is available in the capital, which many of the country’s doctors working in Dakar. Public funding for healthcare is grossly insufficient and many of the small private clinics that serve much of the populations are struggling to meet demand and finance badly needed. The birth rate in Senegal is about 39.9 births per 1,000 people according to a 2012 estimate. The fertility rate, according to 2007 estimates, is relatively high, with an average of 5 children per woman. Moreover, the infant mortality rate is 55.16 deaths per 1,000 live births. Maternal deaths are typically clustered around labor, delivery, and the immediate postpartum period. Children’s healthcare in Senegal is of primary concern to development strategists and heavily influenced by healthcare, education, and wellbeing of women. According to the data from 2005, 14.5 % percent of Senegalese children under the age of 5 are underweight, only 42% of children between 12 and 13 months receive all necessary vaccinations. Children and maternal deaths occur every year, thousands of newborns and mothers die, the majority of these deaths occur within days of childbirth, usually because of the lack of skilled care. More than half of them are preventable infection, premature birth, and asphyxia are the biggest newborn killers, with maternal malnutrition.
Service Providers Analysis
Healthcare in Senegal
Life expectancy by birth is estimated to 57.5 years. Public expenditure on health was at 2.4 percent of the GDP in 2004, whereas private expenditure was at 3.5 percent. Health expenditure was at US$72 (PPP) per capita in 2004. The fertility rate ranged 5 to 5.3 between 2005 and 2013, with 4.1 in urban areas and 6.3 in rural areas, as official survey (6.4 in 1986 and 5.7 in 1997) point out.
There were 6 physicians per 100,000 persons in the early 2000s (decade). Infant mortality was at 77 per 1,000 live births in 2005, but in 2013 this figure had dropped to 47 within the first 12 months after birth. In the past 5 years infant mortality rates of malaria have dropped. According to a 2013 UNICEF report, 26% of women in Senegal have undergone female genital mutilation.
Senegal Low-cost Health Insurance
It’s about to become available to Senegal’s students and informal sector employees via the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC). Nearly two-thirds of all Senegalese lack access to health insurance and many fall into debt when faced with an unexpected illness or accident. “The current state of play in most of West Africa is that private insurance companies can provide health insurance, but it’s extremely expensive when you compare it to the usual average incomes of people,” said Tiphaine Crenn, an IFC operations officer. ”
About 65 percent of people [in Senegal] do not have any health care coverage whatsoever.” In Senegal, only civil service employees or workers at companies with more than 50 employees are eligible to receive health care benefits. Crenn says this means many people rely on loans to cover unexpected health care costs.
“One thing that we see over and over again is what we call a health shock, so some kind of serious illness or accident that completely wipes out family savings, or they even have to borrow money to pay health costs,” she said. “So it makes people extremely vulnerable. All they need is one massive health shock, and it sends them into complete precariousness, indebtedness.”
The IFC says that it will work with six private Senegalese insurance companies to pool the costs of health risks and offer micro-healthcare products at well below normal costs. Unlike other health care plans in Senegal, which run between $500 and $600 a year and are difficult to qualify for, the IFC program will offer plans as low as $16 per year.
Plans that include hospital visits will cost a maximum of $60 per year; for $3 per year, students can gain access to basic health care and pharmacy services if they get injured at school or on the way to school. In exchange for the annual fees, participants will receive a health card that requires them to make a co-payment of just 20 percent of normal treatment or medication costs. Crenn says such a system could change the future of health care in Africa.
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