Universal Health Insurance in Togo: The Need to Involve Patients’ Linguistic Resources

Access to healthcare for the Togolese population has become a reality thanks to Universal Health Insurance (AMU). To this end, AMU has put in place practical measures such as the involvement of the vast majority of health facilities, the mobilization of health care providers, etc. This implies that better health coverage depends on the quality and quantity of healthcare providers and health infrastructures. However, it turns out that the relevance of medical diagnosis and the quality of care administered to patients remain intrinsically linked to the linguistic factor, in particular to linguistic concordance in the patient-caregiver relationship. Using qualitative methods, this paper analyses the impact of linguistic discordance between patients and caregivers in Dapaong hospitals. It is in line with the theoretical approach of linguistics for development (Bearth and Fan 2002; Métangmo-Tatou, 2019; Zouogbo 2022). Analysis has shown that the quality of information received by caregivers influences the nature of the medical act, and taking the linguistic factor into account in the implementation of AMU augurs well for the program’s success, with increased accessibility to hospitals. Keywords: Linguistic Factor, Patients, Caregivers, Medical Act