Cairo, Egypt — 17 April 2024 —The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) in partnership with the People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa (PVA Africa) and launched three new reports evaluating post-COVID health systems in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia.
The three analyses aim to understand the effects of the pandemic on the respective healthcare systems and highlight the gaps that need to be filled to strengthen them.
Months of research and collaboration have revealed the specific interventions that would help Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia to build health systems that can deliver universal health coverage and respond to future health crises such as pandemics.
The reports should also provide decision-makers and civil society actors with the knowledge needed moving forward in health systems reform efforts.
A major strength of these three reports is that they were specifically designed to address the dearth of high-quality, up-to-date health systems data in North Africa.
The EIPR’s research team measured each country’s health system against epidemic preparedness metrics and the World Health Organisation’s health system building blocks metrics. Then, they consulted a panel of 8 to 10 experts from various fields in each country who gave their perspectives on the reality in clinics, hospitals, and communities.
Key findings include:
- Tunisia: Budget problems already plagued Tunisia’s health system before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, resulting in a general downward trend in its functioning. Our review found that the negative trend has continued after COVID-19.
- Egypt: As COVID-19 hit the world, Egypt has taken its first steps towards the roll-out of a universal health coverage scheme. Several positive improvements took place within the context of the new healthcare coverage scheme. Yet, we found an apparent deterioration, particularly in the healthcare workforce, healthcare spending, and the availability of reliable data.
- Morocco: Despite facing challenges aggravated by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the trajectory of the Moroccan healthcare system until 2022 has shown mixed trends across various health system building blocks. Economic crises, budget shortages, and the effects of the pandemic have played significant roles in shaping these trends.
PVA Africa and the EIPR are hosting a discussion about the reports in Cairo today, the 17th of April.
The event live-stream is on the EIPR Facebook account. Join the debate here.
Report summaries are available in English for each country here.
The complete reports are available for free here. They’re available in English, French and Arabic.