Measuring and Understanding the Effects of a Performance Based Financing Scheme Applied to Nutrition Services in Burundi

The government of Burundi is implementing a new financing scheme in health centres. The objective is to provide additional financial compensations to health centres on the basis of their performance in nutrition activities: it consists in the introduction of criteria focusing on malnutrition prevention and care activities in the existing performance based financing (PBF) system. The general objective of this study is to assess the effects of this new financing scheme, to document its impact and to study the chains through which it occurred. This study will provide key evidence for countries with an existing PBF scheme and confronted with malnutrition problems on the appropriateness to extend the strategy to nutrition services. If this impact evaluation brings positive results, this may have implications for the global fight against malnutrition.