ArticleHealth economics review2023
Effects of the free healthcare policy on maternal and child health in Burkina Faso: a nationwide evaluation using interrupted time-series analysis.
Article in Health economics review, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- From fees to free: impacts of user fee removal on child health outcomes - a systematic review.International journal for equity in health · 2025Pooled it
- The fiscal sustainability of Burkina Faso's free health care policy for maternal and child health: an analysis using the fiscal space diamond.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Evaluating the effects of the free healthcare policy on clinical visits and malaria among children in Burkina Faso: a modeling study of past trends and future forecasts.Global health research and policy · 2025Article
- Household costs of care in children under five attending primary care in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Niger: a cross-sectional study nested in the AIRE project.BMJ global health · 2025Article
- Availability and readiness of health facilities in Burkina Faso to provide antenatal care: trend analysis from 2012 to 2020.Reproductive health · 2025Article
- Factors associated with adequate antenatal care use among women of childbearing age in Burkina Faso: finding from the 2010 and 2021 demographic and health surveys.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- How do free healthcare policies impact utilization of maternal and child health services in fragile settings? Evidence from a controlled interrupted time series analysis in Burkina Faso.Health policy and planning · 2024Article
- Inequalities in large-scale breastfeeding programmes in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso and Vietnam.Maternal & child nutrition · 2024Article
- Maternal and child health care access to skilled delivery services among Ghanaian rural mothers.Research in health services & regions · 2024Article
- Financing for equity for women's, children's and adolescents' health in low- and middle-income countries: A scoping review.PLOS global public health · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundBurkina Faso has recently instituted a free healthcare policy for women and children under five. This comprehensive study examined the effects of this policy on the use of services, health outcomes, and removal of costs.
methodsInterrupted time-series regressions were used to investigate the effects of the policy on the use of health services and health outcomes. In addition, an analysis of household expenditures was conducted to assess the effects of spending on delivery, care for children, and other exempted (antenatal, postnatal, etc.) services on household expenditures.
resultsThe findings show that the user fee removal policy significantly increased the use of healthcare facilities for child consultations and reduced mortality from severe malaria in children under the age of five years. It also has increased the use of health facilities for assisted deliveries, complicated deliveries, and second antenatal visits, and reduced cesarean deliveries and intrahospital infant mortality, although not significantly. While the policy has failed to remove all costs, it decreased household costs to some extent. In addition, the effects of the user fee removal policy seemed higher in districts with non-compromised security for most of the studied indicators.
conclusionsGiven the positive effects, the findings of this investigation support the pursuit of implementing the free healthcare policy for maternal and child care.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.