Republic of Benin

In February 2003, my son got sick all of the sudden. My husband and I took him to the health centre where he was kept for 3 days (from Wednesday to Friday). On Saturday, when we went back home, the pain was back and became stronger. When we got to the health centre, the nurse told us that they couldn’t do anything else for his case and recommended us to take our son to the health centre in Ménontin. In Ménonttin, they told me it was appendicitis and that he needed surgery immediately. The total cost of the surgery was 75.000 FCFA to be paid immediately before the surgery, plus the medication. We were stroke with these costs and the conditions because we couldn’t afford it. His father is a pensioner (he used to work at Onibollo cemetery) and we had already paid a lot of money for the 3 days at the health centre.

At that moment, I had already my third loan of a total of 250.000 FCFA and I was still on the last month of payment. In this situation, I was obliged to stop my activities and to use my working-capital fund to cover the costs of the healthcare. The total amount was 116.250 FCFA from which 16.000 FCFA were from hospitalisation costs (7 days of hospitalisation: 2 days in recovery room and 5 days in the treatment room).

After this incident, my business dropped completely. My sister had to help me for the last payment because I couldn’t withdraw any more money. However, I had saved 162.000 FCFA for my fourth loan. If it wasn’t for my sister, I would have been obliged to make a withdrawal (which is forbidden if I wanted to be eligible for my fourth loan). It was with the fourth loan that I could pay back my sister. At this level, there is already a failure because indirectly, I have already used a part of the loan to pay back the money I borrowed from my sister instead of investing in my business.

Thus, when the healthcare micro-insurance started its activities, I was the first person in the zone to become a beneficiary together with my four children and my husband. Later I beneficiated from medical services twice, one of my children was sick in November 2003 and had to go to St Jean health centre, and I beneficiated myself from medical services on December 2003. Without healthcare micro-insurance, I don’t know how much time I would have gone about my business or what part of my loan I would have used to cover the costs of the medical care.