FEMHealth stands for ‘fee exemption for maternal health care’.
Focal countries for this work are Burkina Faso, Benin, Mali and Morocco. All have recently introduced national policies to reduce financial barriers for delivery or emergency obstetric care.
The overall aims of the project are (1) to develop new methodological approaches for the evaluation of complex interventions in low income countries, (2) to improve the health of mothers and their newborns by performing comprehensive evaluations of the impact, cost and effectiveness of the removal of user fees for delivery care on maternal and neonatal health outcomes and service quality, and (3) to improve the communication of this evidence to policy-makers and other stakeholders.
The research will be conducted by a consortium of eight partner institutions.