Cash Transfers for Transport to Health Centres and Malnutrition Treatment Centres

The NGO HELP (Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe) has been active in Burkina Faso’s Sahel region since 2008 and has successfully carried out interventions to strengthen the health system and fight malnutrition.  In 2018, HELP obtained funding from ECHO for a project to fight acute malnutrition in Sebba health district.  Within the framework of this project, HELP introduced cash transfers to pay the costs of transporting children suffering from severe acute malnutrition to the Intensive Nutritional Recovery and Education Centre (CRENI) in Sebba.   

The idea for this project arose from the observation that there is a lack of documentation about the use of cash transfers (CTs) in emergency responses related to health. However, the lack of documentation does not mean an absence of experience and a growing number of health actors are using emergency cash transfers even if the transfers are not called cash transfers.

With the Ebola and the Covid-19 pandemics, the humanitarian community’s interest in the use of cash and vouchers assistance (CVA) in the field of health has increased considerably and there has been a proliferation of research projects in the last five years that aim to make up for the lack of documentation on the benefits of CVA in this field. The objective of this case study is to present the experience in Burkina Faso from an operational perspective, presenting the logic of the project, its successes and challenges, as well as its shortcomings and the lessons that have been learned by the project team. Through the series of case studies being produced by CaLP, the Cash Task Team of the Health Cluster and SDC, the aim is to encourage health actors to share their experiences, facilitate peer learning and begin a dialogue on “how” rather than “if” or “why” cash transfers can be used in humanitarian health projects.