title: [Health policy and financing in Tunisia].
abstract: Programmes for expanding preventive medicine were designed. They were considered part of the measures for promoting health cost containment. In practice, they were not given high priority. During the last decade, the budget of the Department of Health had a lower growth rate than the total budget of the State. Scarcity of resources, coupled with the demographic upward trend and growing per capita demand for health services were deteriorating the care provided to the population. To improve the situation, the National Sickness Insurance Fund created on its own 6 polyclinics. They were soon full of patients and the quality of the services they rendered were lowered. Moreover all the health system is facing two challenges: (i) the resistance to reorientating the system to better serve a larger segment of the population; (ii) the "clientelism" which leads resources to where they are not mostly needed. As a result, the country is divided into two parts: (a) the West, where there is an urgent need for beds and simple equipment; (b) the East, already well-equipped, where practitioners are applying for high-tech devices.
authors.affiliation: Service au Ministère de la Santé Publique de Tunisie.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Dahmani
mesh_terms: D005380:Financing, Government; D005381:Financing, Organized; D006268:Health Facilities / Q000191:economics*; D006291:Health Policy / Q000191:economics*; D006280:Health Workforce / Q000191:economics; D006801:Humans; D014416:Tunisia
vernacular_title: Politique de santé et financement en Tunisie.