Universal access to quality care remains a major challenge in many African countries. ICE-FRANCE brings its expertise to strengthen health systems as a whole: from ministerial governance to primary health care, including financing, human resources, infrastructure, and health information systems. Our multidisciplinary teams — public health physicians, epidemiologists, community health experts, and health financing specialists — design and implement ambitious projects for more resilient populations.
Our approach
Strengthening Health Governance
We assist health ministries in defining sector strategies, revising regulatory frameworks, improving inter-institutional coordination, and strengthening planning and steering capacities of health policies.
Health Financing and Universal Coverage
Insufficient and inequitable financing is one of the main obstacles to health for all. We support the design of innovative financing mechanisms, the establishment of community health mutuals, the strengthening of domestic resource mobilization capacities, and the improvement of reimbursement systems.
Health Human Resources
Without qualified, trained, and motivated health personnel, no system reform can succeed. We intervene in human resource planning, initial and continuing training, improving working conditions, and implementing retention policies in rural and underserved areas.
Community Health and Health Promotion
Health is built closest to the communities. We design community health programs that mobilize local health agents, raise awareness among populations about preventive behaviors, and strengthen the link between communities and formal health structures.
Frequently asked questions
What is your approach to strengthening health systems post-crisis?▼
Crises — whether health-related like COVID-19, or humanitarian — reveal and exacerbate pre-existing systemic weaknesses. Our post-crisis approach starts with an analysis of the systemic failures revealed by the crisis, and then proposes a resilience plan that strengthens the essential functions of the health system: epidemiological surveillance, supply chain of medicines, hospital surge capacity, and intersectoral coordination. We systematically integrate future risk scenarios into the health plans we support.
How do you integrate gender issues into your health projects?▼
Gender is a cross-cutting issue in all our health interventions. Specifically, this means: integrating sex- and age-disaggregated indicators into all the information systems we support, training health professionals on gender biases in diagnosis and care, designing specific programs for women's and adolescent health, and ensuring equitable representation of women in health governance bodies.