Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #112733

Daniel Waldo, MA, International Health Consultant, World Health Organization, 13401 Samhill Circle, Mt. Airy, MD 21771, 410.786.7932, dwaldo1@umbc.edu

As countries endeavor to achieve the millennium development goals (MDGs), policymakers are increasingly interested to know how much of a nation's health resources are being devoted to specific diseases whose control is considered important for the attainment of the MDGs. In the past, there has been very weak, if any, information available on disease specific expenditures and certainly, no concrete methodological approaches for tracking such spending patterns. The influx of new funding e.g. from the Global Fund and other sources, raises concern about the potential administrative burden placed upon countries and organizations that receive financing from these sources.

Disease-specific resources are tracked using the WHO-endorsed, internationally accepted National Health Accounts framework for measuring total (public, private, and donor) health expenditures in a country. PHRplus has been part of an international effort in collaboration with UNAIDS, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, WHO and others to develop standardized and feasible approaches for measuring expenditures on specific diseases, currently focusing on HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Reproductive Health. A standardized approach allows for comparability of expenditure findings between countries.

This paper presents methodological approaches and challenges to tracking expenditures on such health care interventions including issues surrounding definition, expenditure boundaries, allocation of joint costs and estimation of household expenditures. Results from application of the methodology to malaria, HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Health will be presented.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the key challenges to tracking disease-specific expenditures
• List the policy uses of disease-specific expenditure analyses

Keywords: Disease Management, Financing

Related Web page: www.phrplus.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.