GTZ-ILO-WHO-Consortium on Social Health Protection in Developing Countries

Berlin 2005

Participation in the conference

The Conference was targeted at Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Heads of Department, Directors-General, Directors, Chief Executive Officers (e.g. in the field of health, finance, labour, planning, development) and national authorities in developing countries, social partners and stakeholders of international cooperation with an interest in social health care. Participation in the Conference was by invitation only. Please refer to the List of participants Berlin for information on who participated in the conference.

Conference

Objectives of the Conference: The immediate objective of the International Conference on Social Health Insurance in Developing Countries was to discuss and analyse the opportunities and constraints that one of the relevant health financing mechanisms – Social Health Insurance – offers to ensure access to adequate preventive and curative health care. For most developing countries, this includes facing the challenge of providing solutions to the epidemics of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases.

The International Conference on Social Health Insurance in Developing Countries considered the impact of social protection in health on poverty reduction and its contribution towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) as well as its relevance in a range of different epidemiological, socio-economic and cultural settings. The Conference also focused on the role of social health insurance as an equitable, sustainable and solidarity-based financing mechanism, and its contribution to economic development and provision of opportunities for decent work. In this context social dialogue was addressed as an important tool.

Conference documentation: Only those documents posted on this website and those officially distributed at the Conference are official Conference documents. Participants who wish to include papers in the official documentation are requested to submit these to the organising committee for approval. It is at the discretion of this committee whether papers will be included in the official documentation.

Conference Program

In a series of plenary and parallel workshop sessions, the International Conference on Social Health Insurance in Developing Countries proposed and discussed options for solidarity based and universal health financing mechanisms as an important pathway towards broad social protection and economic development. The attached program is the final version.

Program (PDF)

Scope and Objectives

The Scope and Objectives paper provides a framework for the conference outcomes. In this text the conference conveners have outlined the Scope and Objectives of the conference as well as the work carried out by GTZ, ILO and WHO in the field of social health protection within the framework of their collaboration agreement.

Berlin Recommendations for Action

At the end of the conference the convening organisations GTZ, ILO and WHO proposed the following Recommendations for Action.