In order to broaden its social protection system for the benefit of all Moroccans by 2025, Morocco has chosen to open up the health sector to foreign skills and foreign investment, an announcement made at the launch ceremony of this huge project that King Mohammed VI presided over on Wednesday 14 April in Fez. For Rabat, this priority will constitute a real paradigm shift, especially after the pandemic ceases.
The stakes are high. 22 million Moroccan citizens should be insured against illness (medication and hospitalisation costs) during the years 2021 and 2022 according to the new social protection strategy. Another major ambition of Morocco is to generalise family allowances during the years 2023 and 2024 for the benefit of families that do not benefit from them to date.
But there is more. Under the leadership of King Mohammed VI, who is personally overseeing this project, the Kingdom will also proceed, according to a precise timetable, to broaden the base of members of pension schemes. The objective is to include about 5 million people who are employed and do not receive any pension by 2025. But the Moroccan government does not intend to stop there. The job loss indemnity will also be generalised during the year 2025 to cover any person exercising a stable job for a few months. This would create a social safety net, much needed in the north African country where the informal sector is still important.
An opening towards international skills
However, the lack of human resources in the medical sector remains substantial in view of the scale of the project. The generalisation of medical coverage will therefore require taking up numerous challenges, particularly those concerning the low rate of medical supervision, the lack of human resources and their unequal geographical distribution. To overcome this, the Kingdom of Morocco has decided to open up to foreign skills and to allow them to join the medical profession, as well as to stimulate investment in the health sector, through an adapted framework which will be specified in the coming months. In short, foreign doctors and medical personnel will be allowed to settle in Morocco and work in the Kingdom, in order to overcome the actual shortage of talents.
Indeed, Morocco currently needs 35,000 doctors and 57,000 nurses, i.e. nearly 100,000 additional skills. The country has nearly 25,000 doctors, more than half of whom work in the private sector, for 36 million inhabitants. This is in contrast to the standards set by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which are of the order of twenty doctors per 10,000 inhabitants.
In terms of infrastructure, Morocco has 5 University Hospital Centres (CHU), which are operational and 3 others which are currently under construction and whose work is almost complete.
In order to be able to respond to the growing demand as this project is implemented, accompanying measures will be adopted, the objectives of which will be to intensify the training programmes and the consolidation of the medical skills of health professionals.
Strengthening national medical capacities
It is clear that the success of this reform remains dependent on the reinforcement of national medical capacities and the fight against the deficit in health professionals. On the other hand, Morocco has opted to open up the health sector to foreign expertise and foreign investment and to capitalise on successful experiences, in accordance with the high royal instructions contained in the opening speech of the Parliament for the year 2020.
This opening to foreign experiences appears to be necessary to succeed in the challenge of generalization of social protection.According to economic policy expert Uri Dadush, Senior Fellow of the Policy Center for the New South (PCNS): “anything that opens Morocco to international knowledge and international competition is a healthy step,” he said in a statement to the Moroccan News Agency (MAP). This international expert believes that it is “reassuring to see that Morocco continues to be dedicated to a policy of openness and to learn as much as possible from best practices”.
In short, the vast plan to generalise social protection constitutes a coherent and ambitious whole, which combines both internal transformation measures through a massive mobilisation of State resources, but also a strong opening to the outside world and the establishment of innovative public-private partnerships. After succeeding in containing the pandemic through a large range of measures, including strict sanitary measures, a huge economic relief plan, and a massive vaccination campaign, Morocco wants to take its transformation one step further and become the Healthcare champion of Africa.
