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  Dr. Bocar Mamadou Daff, director of reproductive health services in Senegal’s Ministry of Health and Prevention, is in Washington, D.C., this week for a second time in a month. Earlier, he participated in several MLI sessions at the Global Health Council’s annual conference. Now, he is scheduled to meet with several key aides to US Senators and congressmen to talk about the importance of supporting family planning, especially in West Africa.

Dr. Daff spoke with John Donnelly about the lessons of his first June trip to Washington and his hopes for the second visit. This is the first of two Q-and-As related to the Capitol Hill visits. Tomorrow, we’ll run an interview with Pape A. Gaye, president and CEO of Intrahealth.

Q: What was important about the Global Health Council conference for you?

A: What I took away was that it was a real opportunity to review the work going on with MLI. And it was also an opportunity for the five MLI countries (Ethiopia, Mali, Nepal, Senegal and Sierra Leone) to regroup and talk about what they had done and also to look ahead at what needs to be done next.

I think there were two key moments during the week. The first was the “Call to Action” when it was launched. It was a key moment to tell people about the direction we are going in country ownership and it gave all five countries an opportunity to talk about their experiences.

In 2009, representatives from Senegal’s Ministry of Health and Prevention participated in a MLI-sponsored study tour to Rwanda. There they found an innovative plan to change their current health financing system.

Rwanda has pioneered many different health financing schemes including community based health insurance, over the past 5 years. The rate of health care utilization in Rwanda has doubled in the past three years in part due to equitable resource allocation policies that have increased the affordability of health services. One of their most effective schemes is a performance based financing (PBF) plan which allocates resources depending on the performance of a hospital or clinic. At the time of the study tour, results from Rwanda’s PBF program were just becoming known. The Senegalese delegation was able to see first-hand evidence that that PBF was transforming Rwanda’s health sector.