National Health Accounts team to be formed in Amran

An eye to improving health care: 

Health administration employees receive training to improve allocation of Yemen’s health funding.

As part of the government’s initiative to improve the health care situation in Yemen, the second of five training courses planned for different governorates around the country on National Health Accounts was held in Amran province to analyze health expenditures in the region. The Amran Health and Population Office in cooperation with the Yemen Partners for Health Reform (YPHR) project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), held a training course on financial management of health accounts March 8 through 13.

The course aimed to train a health accounts team formed of members from different sectors of the health field. It is the second of its kind in Yemen, the first having been previously held in Marib governorate. Further training courses are scheduled for Sa’ada, al-Jawf and Shabwa.

Dr. Khalid Ahmad al-Kurbati, Deputy General Manager of Health in Amran province, said that this course was preceded by a seminar attended by governorate leaders one month ago where the establishment of the training sessions was agreed upon by the YPHR project and the Office of Health. The current role of the health office is to coordinate with concerned offices to select candidates for the health accounts team.

The YPHR project has carried all financial costs of the training session, while the health office coordinated and arranged the course and organized all those participants who attended the training.  

22 employees from 14 different government bodies concerned with areas of health administration such as planning, statistics, finance, local council, social funds for development and educational offices participated in the training course.

Dr. al-Kurbati stated that participants of the course were divided into five work teams. He added that the governor would issue a resolution to form a national health accounts panel during the coming days.

One team from the course is gathering information from donors and vertical programmes which come from the Ministry of Health. Another team is collecting information from public and private sector companies. A third team is arranging and coordinating the wealth of information held in Central Statistics while another team will survey private enterprises.

Dr. Khalid Ahmad al-Kurbati

Action will start one week from now, with it having been mandated that each team put their accumulated perceptions and plans to work. A list of that which will be targeted and the methodology of work will also be produced by each working team, al-Kurbati said. "Then a meeting will be held in the health office to approve the work and the methodology of preparing the questionnaires [used to collect industry information]," he added.

The National Health Accounts training course in Amran also included five participants from Lahjj governorate who will establish a national health accounts work team there.

“The purpose of this course and the National Health Accounts project is to ascertain the financial flow of monies offered by the health ministry to its projects in the different governorates," al-Kurbati explained. "This will show us how much the health system is costing and how to improve the status of health services. We can also re-evaluate our health system and search for defective areas,” said al-Kurbati. 

Dr. al-Kurbati added that this will give a better idea of the health budget and how to convince decision-makers that what the health ministry is providing is not adequate. He said that the health office wants increases to the health budget at logical levels, to bring it in line with those of other world countries in comparable economic situations.

Field surveys of the health accounts will expire at the end of this year and will focus on 2006 accounts because analysis is performed on real spending rather than estimates, and these real amounts may only come in at the end of the following year.

"God willing, the report will come in a way to persuade decision makers to convert the study into real practice. I advised the teams to take the issues into account and do their best and apply all their knowledge professionally," al-Kurbati said.

Mansour al-Lawzi, a consultant and expert in the field of national health accounts and health information systems in the YPHR project, talked about the project, saying, "This is one of the initiatives of USAID working concurrently with the project of Basic Health Service (BHS) for offering health service to people in five targeted governorates, "al-Lawzi said.

YPHR consultant Mansour al-Lawzi

Al-Lawzi stated that the National Health Accounts program is a new tool which has been used in a number of countries around the world. "In 2003, with the support of the Yemen Partners in Health Reform project, a central team was formed with the assistance of the Ministry of Health to be part of the Ministry. Foreign team experience also helped in the implementation of the second session of the National Health Accounts in 2003,” he said.

“This training course on National Health Accounts lasted for six days and taught participants how to provide important financial statistics to stress to the decision-makers in the ministry the need to improve the health situation in the province,” said al-Lawzi. Al-Lawzi added that this work comes under the directives of the health ministry to put controls on health expenditures. The National Health Accounts will use scientific methods to determine the needs of health ministry expenditures.

The initial work of the team will be to implement five preliminary surveys to collect data on various aspects related to health care. Fields to be surveyed include family expenditures on health care, expenditures of the main programmes of the Health and Population Ministry, and contributions of charitable associations and labor syndicates to the health field. In addition, a survey for donors and another for public and private sector companies will be completed.

Yousra al-Amrani of the Social Development Fund in Amran province was among the course participants. Al-Amrani said that initially prospective participants did not know about the training session on National Health Accounts and did not have any knowledge or information about the quality of the session.

“But after attending the course, we identified the definition of national health accounts and how current expenditures on health are flowing into the province of Amran and what the relevant priorities are and what the needs are for the future,” said al-Amrani.

Al-Amrani expressed her admiration of the course and said, "I benefited from this course so much. The training team was so excellent, headed by Monsour al-Lawzi, and we got a lot of information about the National Health Accounts system. We recognized the importance of national health accounts and their importance to decision-makers in drawing up the national health policy for the coming years".

"Participation in this course was very effective because the subject is sensitive and policy-makers do not know what the health situation is. This course gives a clear vision to them to determine the size of health expenditures," said Ammar al-Maghrebi of the Health and Population office in Amran province, one of the participants in the course.

Al-Maghrebi advised his partners on the team to maintain credibility and transparency and do their best to complete this important project for Amran province.

“The results of the National Health Accounts project will be very effective in improving the health situation in the province, and this idea may be adopted by the government to be implemented in other governorates,” said al-Maghrebi.

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