The vision of CBHI is to provide intervention strategies, and support to the administration of preventive health care services in Nigeria’s underprivileged and rural communities, allowing vulnerable and poor individuals and families to achieve access to healthcare services. To attain this, CBHI is taking leadership and resource mobilization role in addressing the social and economic determinants to health care as they impact individuals, families and communities.
Ill health, in turn, is a major cause of poverty. This is partly due to the costs of seeking health care, which include not only out-of-pocket spending on care (such as consultations, tests and medicine), but also transportation costs and any informal payments to providers. It is also due to the considerable loss of income associated with illness in developing countries, both breadwinners, but also of family members who may be obliged to stop working or attending school to take care of an ill relative. In addition, poor families coping with illness might be forced to sell assets to cover medical expenses, borrow at high interest rates or become indebted to the community.