
30/11/2022
Triangular cooperation with the Sudan UHC Project: UHC training in Thailand
Date: 17-21 October 2022
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Thailand’s National Health Security Office (NHSO), in collaboration with GLO+UHC project, provided a one-week Universal Health Coverage (UHC) training for eight delegates from the Republic of Sudan’s National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) 1).
Thailand has been known worldwide for achieving UHC ahead of other low- and middle- income countries and having rich experiences in maintaining the UHC schemes for 20 years. In this connection, a big feature of the GLO+UHC Project is that it focuses on supporting other countries based on the partnership between Thailand and Japan by using technical scheme of north-south-south triangular cooperation. This time, GLO+UHC Project connected JICA’s UHC Project in Sudan with NHSO to share the Thai UHC experience with Sudan and progress UHC forward. After discussion over a year, NHSO and NHIF agreed to conclude a memorandum of understanding (MOU), and the UHC training course was realized with coordination of NHSO and financial and logistic support by JICA.
In this UHC training course, NHSO provided series of lectures, such as benefit package development, provider payment mechanism, claim management, data management, and consumer protection as well as observation of the billing practice at a provincial hospital at the site visits to Saraburi Province. Since NHIF is introducing electric claim system, they had deep lessons on claim management through lectures by a fund management specialist and IT audit specialists. The site visits also allowed them to observe how the seamless two-way referral system among primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare facilities operates and works.
At the wrap-up session on the final day, Sudan team briefly reported fruits of the trainings and expressed their deep gratitude and expectations for future learning activities. The MOU between NHSO and NHIF will continue even after the completion of the GLO+UHC Project and the Sudan UHC Project, so the both projects will support them in building sustainable collaboration. GLO+UHC keeps seeking further opportunities to support other countries and this activity indicates the network between JICA’s technical cooperation project regarding UHC could boost the progress on UHC movement.
1) The NHIF was established in 1995 as a main public health insurance institution of Sudan, where 89% of the population of 45 million is currently covered by health insurance.