Assessing the Acceptability of Digital Financial Services and Associated Factors, Opportunities, and Challenges in Burundi's Health Sector

Background Digital financial services (DFS) allow people to send and 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 payments (DP) and identify the factors, opportunities and challenges associated with the use of DFS in Burundi’s health system. Methods This is a cross-sectional, descriptive, and analytical study carried out in Burundi from March to November 2023. The study was conducted in 16 health districts and included 2,731 health care and services providers (HPs). Results The majority of HPs were young and working in the rural areas. Most of them (86.5% ) had general knowledge of DP. The acceptance level of DP among the HPs was 62% compared with 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 they have 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, respectively, to use DP during vaccination campaigns than physicians. Conclusion This study sufficiently demonstrates that the use of DP in the Burundi’s health sector overall, and during vaccination campaigns, can have a positive impact.