PRS Assessment of Chronic Poverty in Tanzania: Focusing on Health and the HIV/AIDS Sector

Abstract

This research addresses to find out how PRS policy implementation through focusing on basic health services and HIV/AIDS care and prevention has reached chronically poor and what the drivers / obstacles toward it in Tanzania are. This focus has been chosen because of the recent stagnation in the health of Tanzanian people, and as HIV/AIDS is the threat to the people as the most impoverishing force in Tanzania (Tz Participatory Poverty Assessment 2002/3). In focusing on implementation of some PRS prioritized policies targeted to the population in general and specifically to vulnerable groups, the research looks at the coverage and quality of these, unpacks PRS process in terms of PRS-sector policy linkage and its implementation process through budgeting and decentralization, and looks at what the drivers and obstacles toward implementation are. It also looks at the effective social protection programmes. Through this it aims to address how the PRS and social protection could effectively reach the chronically poor to assist their poverty reduction. It also aims to fill the gap on research on chronically poverty in Tanzania.

Keywords: social protection, PRSP, HIV, AIDS, chronic poverty, poverty reduction, Africa, Tanzania, southern Africa