Assessing acceptability of digital financial services and associated factors, opportunities and challenges in Burundi health sector

Background: Digital financial services (DFS) allow people to send, receive payments, and manage their finances. In Burundi, they are limited to individual money transfer agents and the purchase of phone credits. Objective: To assess the acceptability of digital payment (DP) and identify factors, opportunities and challenges associated to the use of DFS in Burundi health system. Methods : This is a cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical study conducted in Burundi from March to November 2023. The study was conducted in 16 health districts and included 2731 health care and services providers (HPs). Results: The majority of HPs was young and working in the rural area. Most of them (86.5% ) had a general knowledge on DP. The acceptance level of DP among the HPs was 62% against 74.8% among the community health workers (CHWs). Many of our study participants (88.1%) believed that DFS have a positive impact on vaccination campaigns and 74.9% thought it has an excellent effectiveness. The HPs who worked at the rural level were 1.26 times more likely to use DP during vaccination campaigns than those in the urban area. The CHWs and paramedical staff were respectively 3.94 and 1.48 times more likely to use DP during vaccination campaigns than physicians. Conclusion: This study sufficiently proved that the use of DP in the Burundi health sector in general and during vaccination campaigns especially can have a positive impact.