Health fee exemptions: controversies and misunderstandings around a research programme. Researchers and the public debate

Our research programme on fee exemption policies in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger involved sensitive topics with strong ideological and political connotations for the decision-makers, for health-workers, and for users. Thus we were confronted with reluctance, criticism, pressures and accusations. Our frank description of the shortcomings of these policies, based on rigorous research, and never polemical or accusatory, surprises political leaders and health managers, who are accustomed to official data, censored evaluations and discourse of justification. This reflexive paper aims to react to some misunderstandings that arose regularly: "By focusing on the problems, you will discourage the aid donors". "By focusing on the problems, you are playing into the hands of the opponents of fee exemption". "You should focus on what works and not on what doesn't work". "The comments and behaviour you report are not representative". "What you say is not new, we already knew about it". Double discourse prevails in aid-dependent countries. The official discourse is mostly sterilized and far removed from reality. It protects the routine of the local bureaucracies. But the private 'speak' is quite different, and everyone knows the everyday ruses, tricks and arrangements within the health system. Anthropologists collect the private speak and transmit it to the public sphere through their analyses in order to provide a serious account of a reality, and creating the conditions for an expert debate and a public debate. The national conference on fee exemption held in Niamey in 2012 was a success in this perspective: healthcare personnel spoke for the first time in a public setting about the numerous problems associated with the fee exemption policy, and they largely confirmed and even supplemented the results of our research. It is difficult to see how the healthcare system can be improved and better quality of service provided without starting from a rigorous diagnosis of these usually concealed realities. Such diagnosis gives arguments to reformers within the health system to make change happen.