Burkina Faso health system

Structure

3 sectors: public sub-sector, private sub-sector and traditional sub-sector:

Public sub-sector:

  • Health districts:

    • First level of contact:

      • 1,606 health and social promotion centres, 123 isolated clinics, 14 isolated maternity clinics and 32 medical centres

      • Minimum package of activities (including malaria)

    • Second level: 45 district referral hospitals/medical centres with surgical units

  • Regional level

    • Hospitals (9)

    • Referral level facilities for district level

  • National level

    • University hospitals (3), national hospital

    • Referral level facilities for regional level

    • Medical training and research

Laboratory network at 120 facilities at all levels

Private Sector 

  • 2013: 78 private healthcare facilities providing hospital care

  • 306 private healthcare facilities providing non-hospital care

  • 693 private dispensing pharmacies and drug stores

  • Mostly in Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso

Traditional medicine sector

  • MoH recommends that serious cases of illness seen by these practitioners be referred to healthcare facilities 

    • Practitioners will be trained to recognize signs of severe malaria (funded by the state budget)

  • Traditional medicine sector is gradually being incorporated into the health system under the Directorate for Medicine and Traditional Medicine at the MoH.
  • Government budget will support training of traditional medicine practitioners to recognize signs of severe malaria and to refer these cases to the appropriate health facility.

Challenges

Case Management

  • Rectal artesunate not included in pre-referral guidelines

Quality of health information system

  • Data quality and completeness

  • Delayed transmission

  • Excessive workload due to the large number of data collection tools

  • No data on consumption, number of people reached by awareness-raising activities and community data

    • Parallel information system results in duplicate, inconsistent information

Input management

  • Procurement

    • Late deliveries, cumbersome procedures, tight stock levels, lack of financial resources

    • Leads to nationwide stock-outs.

  • Storage

    • Storage and distribution limitations

    • Delivery delays and/or over-stocking

      • Negotiations under way with partners and central purchasing office for essential generic drugs and medical consumables to integrate all products into the national drug distribution system

  • Distribution

    • Procurement challenges 

    • Lack of coordination

Human resources

  • Human capacity constraints

  • Mobile populations lead to delays and shortcomings in implementing activities

  • Supervision of community level workers