This is the ninth in a series of posts from the Ministerial Leadership Initiative's Learning Collaborative Forum in Ethiopia.

One has an army of women. 

Another has a president. A third a first lady, and a fourth "all the marbles in place."

Around a table today at the MLI’s Learning Collaborative Forum in Addis Ababa, four Health Ministry reproductive health directors from Ethiopia, Mali, Senegal, and Sierra Leone had a rare opportunity to talk about successes and challenges in their countries.

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This is the third in a series of blogs from the Ministerial Leadership Initiative for Global Health's Learning Collaborative Forum held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

For years, Mali has had community-funded health insurance organizations, but the movement grew slowly. At the end of 2009, the country’s120 so-called mutuelles provided coverage to just 2.1 percent of the population.

Dr. Salif Samake, director of planning and statistics at Mali’s Ministry of Health, told the MLI Learning Collaborative Forum today in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, that his government was committed to a universal health coverage plan that would expand the health insurance service to 351 communities, with 28.4  percent of the country’s residents in the next five years.

In a free-wheeling session afterward, Samake’s peers in Health Ministries in Ethiopia, Nepal, Sierra Leone and Senegal – many of whom also are wrestling with health financing and equitable coverage -- then gave him a series of challenging questions.

Pour lire la version française, voir ci-dessous.

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