National Health Accounts

Three of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) explicitly target health problems that plague developing countries, reflecting the global recognition of the importance of health as an effective tool to fight poverty. Goals 4, 5, and 6 address child mortality, maternal health, and diseases such as human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) and malaria. In order to efficiently secure the allocation of scarce resources to meet these goals, policy authorities need effective ways of monitoring health-related financial transactions.

The National Health Account (NHA) is an accounting framework that records the expenditures, financing, and allocation of resources within a country’s health system over a defined period of time. In essence, health accounts describe the financial flows behind the production, consumption, and distribution of health care ...