Tanzania
has made significant progress in delivering education and health services,
particularly in the areas of rural health infrastructure and teacher
attendance, according to the latest Service Delivery Indicators.
However,
the new data also highlight weaknesses that are contributing to low levels of
learning in primary schools and tragic mortality levels among mothers and
newborns. Tanzania’s maternal mortality rate is very high at 432 deaths per
100,000 live births.
“While
Tanzania has reduced child mortality, mothers and newborns are still at high
risk of untimely death; and while the country has achieved near-universal
primary school enrollment, one in four children cannot read a paragraph in
Kiswahili in Standard Four,” said Keith Hansen, World Bank Group Vice President
for Human Development.
“Service
Delivery Indicators are public data that citizens can use to hold the
government accountable for education and health services, and that the government
can use to inform reform efforts in these sectors. As Tanzania aspires to
achieve middle-income status by 2025, SDI is an example of the kind of data
transparency and accountability that could be transformational.”
Health
infrastructure is improving rapidly, especially in rural Tanzania, going from 5
percent of health facilities with clean water, power, and improved sanitation
in 2010 to 36 percent in 2014. Serious challenges remain, including getting
more health workers out to rural areas—which have only 9 percent of the
country’s doctors and 28 percent of its health workforce—and boosting their
diagnostic capacity. The data show that three out of five health workers cannot
identify severe dehydration, a fatal condition for children.
According
to the latest information available to the press says in education, teacher
absenteeism from schools has fallen sharply by 40 percent, leading to 24 more
teaching days a year.
However,
37 percent of the teachers who were in school were still not in the classroom
and teaching. Therefore, classroom absence remains a challenge and points to
school leadership and management issues.
Teacher-pupil
ratios have become more manageable, dropping by 20 percent across the country,
but remain very high in urban schools. Importantly, teacher knowledge continues
to be a serious issue, with only one in five mastering the curriculum they
teach.
The
World Bank, REPOA and the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) have
partnered to produce this round of data for Tanzania. SDI surveys have so far
been done in eight African countries—Kenya, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria,
Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, and Uganda, capturing the service delivery experience
of 370 million people. Tanzania and Senegal pioneered these surveys in 2010.
Ends.
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