Over the past two decades, life expectancy in Burundi has improved significantly. One of the powerful reasons is access to health insurance cards known as (CAM, Carte d’assurance Maladie). The cost is just £4 for an entire year. Yet for many vulnerable families, even £4 feels impossible.
For Mayoya, a 39-year-old mother of two, that £4 was a matter of life and death. Mayoya knows what it means to feel forgotten. After her husband left her to marry another woman, she was chased from her home with her children. With nowhere to go, she survived by working in other people’s fields, earning barely enough to buy food for the day.
Her children were often sick with malaria and high fevers. Without insurance, there was no clinic visit or medication to buy. She would sit beside them at night and pray, hoping their small bodies would recover.
Then one day, she fell sick herself. Malaria struck hard. Her leg, already injured from long hours of labour, gave way. That same week, she received a health card from Restoration Burundi.
“Receiving this card just in time saved my life,” she said. Mayoya was taken to a nearby clinic, treated properly, and today she has fully recovered. She is back on her feet.
For Godelieve*, 70 years old, that £4 stood between her and hope.
She was not the only one, Godelieve, 70, has become weaker as her body has grown older. Malaria and the constant recurrence of tuberculosis had become part of her reality. Whenever she fell sick, she had no choice but to stay at home and wait for her strength to return, since she had no money to visit a clinic
Godelieve was thrilled to receive her very first health insurance card.
“Thank you for thinking of me,” she expressed. “I had lost all hope that I would ever get this card. Receiving this card just proved that I matter, whereas I thought I didn’t matter to anyone.”
Over the past year, through GLO’s partners, including Restoration Burundi, Greenland Alliance, and others, more than 2,800 vulnerable people have received health insurance cards. Recently, a further 390 cards were distributed specifically to mothers, the elderly, and families who could not afford them.
