Women Health Problems And The Health Budget In Tanzania

Abstract

The national budget is expected to be an instrument for the judicious allocation of public resources. It is true however that priorities are not always followed as influential groups are able to get access to more of these scarce resources than others. While the consequences of misallocation of public resources in some sectors are missed opportunities. In the health sector the consequence are often citizens dying of avoidable causes. The most vulnerable groups in this case are women and children. Our paper raise gender issues as they manifest themselves in Tanzania's national budget and the health sector. Issues of contention which have been raised concerning the budget have usually covered the weight of allocations between recurrent and development budgets as well as the disparity between the amounts allocated and the actual performance of the budget. Issues of gender hardly come to the picture. It is often taken for granted that the budget is gender neutral. Recently however there have been calls to look at the budget as it affects different groups in society. One such area which needs attention is the health budget as it affects men and women who often face different health problems.


African Journal of Finance and Management Vol.9(2) 2001:51-64