Senegal Couverture Maladie Universelle (CMU)

Senegal's Couverture Maladie Universelle, or CMU, is the country's universal health coverage policy, launched by President Macky Sall in 2013 and made a top political priority across his 2012 and 2019 election campaigns; it is a distinct national program from France's identically named Couverture Maladie Universelle law of 2000. The policy brings together four coexisting protection mechanisms, compulsory health insurance, medical assistance, community-based health insurance delivered through local mutual health organizations known as mutuelles, and commercial insurance, coordinated by a dedicated CMU Agency that transferred from the Ministry of Health to the Ministry of Community Development, Social and Territorial Equity in April 2019 to separate purchasing from provision of care. The community-based mutuelles, aimed chiefly at informal-sector and rural populations, grew to no fewer than 676 organizations nationwide by the end of 2016, offering harmonized benefit packages with state subsidies for poor members. By June 2019 an estimated 45.39 percent of the Senegalese population was covered by some form of social protection scheme for health, still below the government's planned targets.