Minister of Health Launches NHA Work in Egypt
Apr 23 2009
His Excellency (H.E.), the Minister of Health, Prof. Dr. Hatem El Gabaly, defined NHA as a key tool in improving the effectiveness of health systems to achieve Egypt’s health reform objectives in opening a two-day NHA workshop in Cairo March 31-April 1.
When His Excellency (H.E.), the Minister of Health, Prof. Dr. Hatem El Gabaly, joined the MOH in 2006 and asked about the cash flow in the organization, no one was able to give him an answer. He wondered how he could be expected to make decisions without access to such basic information. H.E. made these and other comments highlighting the importance of National Health Accounts (NHA) in opening a two-day NHA workshop in Cairo March 31-April 1. Having pioneered the application of the NHA framework in the Middle East region in the early 1990s, Egypt is the only country to have carried out three NHA exercises.
H.E. defined NHA as a key tool in improving the effectiveness of health systems to achieve Egypt’s health reform objectives. Given the current economic situation in Egypt, H.E. stressed that it is more important than ever to build capacity within the MOH to make better informed decisions about limited resources.
More than thirty participants attended the workshop held by Health Systems 20/20 in collaboration with the Egyptian Department of Planning (DOP), the Ministry of Health (MOH), and the World Health Organization. Attending were representatives from the MOH, DOP, Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, Ministry of Petroleum, Ministry of Social Affairs, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Higher Education, Ministry of Finance, Medical Syndicate, Curative Care Organization, Health Insurance Organization, Engineer Syndicate, and public and private firms.
Ms. Holly Dempsey, USAID Chief of the Health and Population Division in Egypt, stated that USAID’s role is to provide technical leadership through Health Systems 20/20 for NHA data collection and analysis.
Dr. Mervat Taha, Director General, DOP, highlighted the importance of NHA in providing data that allows policymakers to use health care resources more efficiently and as a tool to measure the performance of the health care system. She stressed the importance of multi-sectoral collaboration and the need to strengthen the existing economic unit in the DOP to institutionalize NHA in Egypt.
Dr. Zine-Eddine El Idrissi, health economist, WHO/EMRO, demonstrated how the NHA tables are used to diagnose the financial status of a health system. Dr. El Idrissi gave an overview of NHA and illustrated how the information has been designed to provide health expenditure information to policymakers in ways that can be clearly and directly linked to a nation’s health financing policies, concerns, and issues.
The second day of the workshop focused on reaching consensus with all stakeholders on the different NHA classification appropriate to Egypt. Workshop organizers explained next steps and the timeline to carry out the next NHA in Egypt. Upcoming in May will be a training of trainers workshop in May to discuss:
- Definition of the concepts of expenditure and boundaries
- Set up and reading the matrices
- Collection and organization of data
- Completion of the matrices
- Interpreting results and policy implications
