Project profile — Strengthening Tanzania’s Primary Healthcare System for Women and Girls

• Tanzania (100.00%)

• Health, General: Health policy and administrative management (12110) (5.00%)
• Health: Health statistics and data (12196) (5.00%)
• Basic health care:
Basic health care (12220) (25.00%)
Basic health infrastructure (12230) (5.00%)
Health personnel development (12281) (10.00%)
• Reproductive health care:
Reproductive health care (13020) (30.00%)
Family planning (13030) (10.00%)
Personnel development for population and reproductive health (13081) (10.00%)

• Gender equality (significant objective)
• Nutrition (significant objective)
• Children's issues (significant objective)
• Youth Issues (significant objective)

Through the support of the Government of Canada and other international donors, the Health Basket Fund aims to support the primary health care elements of Tanzania’s Health Sector Strategic Plan V. This project provides coordinated health system strengthening and service delivery for primary health care across Tanzania. Project activities include: (1) delivering life-saving essential primary health care services such as antenatal and postnatal care, emergency obstetric and newborn care, and family planning; (2) conducting small-scale rehabilitation of health facilities to support the provision of gender-sensitive sexual and reproductive health and rights and maternal and adolescent health services; (3) training, mentoring and supervising healthcare workers; (4) performing immunizations and preventing and treating communicable diseases such as malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea and COVID-19; and (5) supporting the strengthening health facility governance committees (including to enhance women’s participation). The Health Basket Fund provides 90% of funding directly to 5,591 public sector primary health facilities across mainland Tanzania. The project expects 71 million patient visits to take place annually at village-level health dispensaries and 48 million patient visits to take place at health centres.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) improved use of quality, gender- and adolescent-responsive primary health care services, including for sexual and reproductive health and maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health, particularly by women, adolescent girls and children; and (2) strengthened public primary health care system accountability and responsiveness to needs of the poorest and most marginalized, particularly women, adolescent girls and children.

Results achieved as of June 2024 include: (1) increased the percentage of institutional deliveries to 86.2%, up from 83% in 2020; (2) increased the percentage of primary health care facilities having essential medicines and equipment to 76%, up from 55% in 2020; (3) increased the number of facilities providing adolescent and youth friendly sexual and reproductive health services to 84%, up from 63% in 2020; (4) increased the number of facilities providing gender-based violence services to 31.1%, up from 20% in 2020; and (5) increased the awareness of people living with human immunodeficiency virus of their status to 94.2%, up from 84% in 2020.

• Proactive disclosure
• Related activities: Strengthening Tanzania's Primary Healthcare System – Technical Assistance Fund