Health system in Benin

Benin’s national health system has a pyramid structure with three levels:

• Central,
• Intermediate,
• Peripheral

Community health workers serve at the peripheral level and are trained in malaria treatment and high-impact interventions.¹

A recent national study found that 70% of all antimalarial sales take place in the private sector.² Almost half of private sector clinics are unregistered; efforts are underway to reform the registration process to better align private providers’ practices with national standards.

The Benin NMCP National Malaria Strategic Plan (PSN) covers the period from 2017 to 2021.² In 2019, the CNLS-TP (Conseil National de Lutte contre le SIDA, les infections sexuellement transmissibles, la Tuberculose, le Paludisme, les hépatites et les épidémies), a new presidential body created and mandated to design and oversee the implementation of the country’s strategies with the goal of eliminating priority diseases by 2030, began developing a new integrated strategic plan (Plan Stratégique National Intégré, PSNIE) that encompasses the strategies of all disease control programs, including malaria.² With the new PSNIE, Benin is adopting an integrated multi-sectoral approach to tackle priority diseases by rationalizing and coordinating the existing government and partner resources.²

The content of the new PSNIE will include a number of new strategies (not all part of the current PSN). These strategies include larval source management (LSM), including the implementation of large-scale sanitation activities and larviciding to destroy both temporary and permanent breeding sites to address outdoor mosquito biting and supplement insecticide-treated mosquito net (ITNs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS).²

The plan also includes the additional protection of using house screening (i.e. putting up net screens over home openings such as windows, doors and eaves) to further prevent infectious mosquito bites beyond IRS and ITNs; this will further decrease mosquito- vector contact and enhance protection against mosquitoes indoors. However, these interventions currently do not receive PMI resources.²

In addition, the CNLS-TP is intending to roll out a revamped integrated community health strategy that would require the payment of monthly salaries to community health workers.²