The Health Accounts Teams Members from 12 countries that are in the process of undertaking a health accounts exercise and taking steps to institutionalize the process have completed a WHO training on System of Health Accounts (SHA) that took place from 26 – 30 May 2014, Johannesburg, South Africa. The participating countries were Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The training focused on expenditure tracking by disease to respond to global and national data needs, i.e., tracking expenditure on RMNCH, HIV, TB, and Malaria, vaccines and child hood diseases, as well as the Abuja commitment of 15% spending for health.

In addition, according to Tomas Roubal, the training developed participants’ awareness and appreciation of the international standard methodology, SHA 2011, the WHO health account country platform approach and its associated tools, the health accounts production and analysis tools. All participants did hands-on examples in the Health Accounts Production Tool.  On return to their countries, the participants are expected to finalize the current set of National Health Accounts (NHAs) that they are working on, including developing a plan of action for institutionalizing Health Accounts production in their respective countries as well as outlining technical assistance required from WHO and partners.

In South Africa, NHAs are an important part of the joint NDOH/WHO work plan over the next 5 years.  The National Department of Health in South Africa will embark this year on the process of institutionalizing National Health Accounts, and establish a task force with participation from key stakeholders to lead this process.  NHAs will be used to complement existing public resource tracking systems in South Africa, and will be an essential tool for monitoring National Health Insurance (NHI) implementation across the country.

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by Mr Tomas Roubal, WHO Country Office Health Economist