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Asia Pacific National Health Accounts Network
Date: January 30, 2000
CONTENTS1) New member - Kyrgyzstan
2) Request for assistance - India District Health Accounts
3) Request for assistance in preparing TOR for NHA (Malaysia)
4) Discussion paper - Adequacy of public health definitions in OECD framework
5) Newsletter from Harbin NHA group
6) Update to AP NHA members listing
**My apologies for the long silence. We have been busy with various activities, and have not had time to keep up with this. Please contact each other if you have any specific questions. Ravi Rannan-Eliya**
1) New member: Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan has requested to join the network.
The main contact person for Kyrgyzstan will be Adilet-Sultan T. Meimanaliev. His contact details are given below.
Adilet-Sultan T. Meimanaliev
ZdravReform Program
Bishkek
Kyrgyzstan
1 T. Moldo
Phone: (996-312) 663708, 663816
Fax: (996-312) 661024
E-mail: sonun@hotmail.com
adilet@yahoo.com
Please copy any correspondence to: moh@manas.bishkek.su
Adilet-Sultan has provided a small introduction on the status of NHA in Kyrgyzstan:
"Our team has been working on development of the NHA since the beginning of 1999. We have developed the concept of national health accounts, that would both account for the specific features of the national accounting system and allow for the program budgeting (a requirement of the World Bank). We have developed a database structure, where all sources of funds and expenditure items are clearly identified. We have collected the data from all public healthcare facilities for 1997-1998. Now we R about to start analyzing the data.
Our role in this process can be summarized to the following: we are authors, coordinators and analysts of the NHA. Our team consists of three people:
Iskender Z. Abdyldaev, team-leader
Jumabek T. Malabekov, economist
Adilet-Sultan T. Meimanaliev, economist.
We have developed and collected the database of all public healthcare facilities for 1997-1998. The database includes financial data of the facilities from both budgetary and non-budgetary activities.
However, the National Health Accounts of Kyrgyzstan cannot be considered complete due to unavailability of information about out-of-pocket payments of the population, the share of private health sector and the exact number of humanitarian aid/grants received. To account for these our team is planning to conduct nationwide surveys of households, private healthcare providers, and NGOs.
The agencies responsible for the NHA project are Research & Analysis Group of the ZdravReform Program, MANAS Healthcare System Reform Program and the Ministry of Health.
Unfortunately, we have no website yet, as well as no papers to distribute. However, Aigul Alymkulova, a person who was at the very beginning of the Kyrgyz National Health Accounts, is now working on writing a report. She will also give you more detailed information on history and structure of our database.
We will be glad to provide you with any further information.
Sincerely,
Adilet-Sultan
From: Charu Garg, India
I have recently started work on a project on National Health Accounts for India. The purpose of the study is to build a framework for NHA for India which could be used to develop National Health Accounts in India on a sustainable basis.
Currently the data on Health is very rudimentary and whatever exists is available in bits and pieces and needs to be collated. The purpose of the study will be to collect the available information, identify the areas where there is missing information and finally present it in the NHA framework. I also plan to identify the gaps and suggest where and how the data can be collected in a sustainable way.
In the context of this study I plan to look at the narrow and broad definitions of health and try to evolve the framework around these definitions. I also plan to do a exploratory analysis for developing a framework at the district level. To start with, I plan to choose one of the states of India to test the framework.
I would need your advice and would welcome any suggestions on how I should go about doing it. What are the experiences of various countries, data and literature that exists for different countries.
Regards
Charu
---------------------------
Charu C. Garg
Health Policy Research Center
Institute of Economic Growth
University Enclave
Malka Ganj
Delhi-110007
Phone(O):+91-11-7257424,7257101
(R):+91-11-6893820
Fax: +91-11-7257410
email:charu@ieg.ernet.in, cgarg@vsnl.com
3) Request for assistance in preparing TOR for NHA in Malaysia
From: Rozita Halina Hussein, Malaysia
Dear friends,
As you know from the previous message, the Government of Malaysia has decided to develop a NHA system for the country. As we have no real expertise in this area, we are planning to secure external consultants to assist us in the development, implementation and institutionalization of the NHA, including any regulatory aspect to facilitate data collection from various sectors and institutions. In fact the WHO Western Pacific Region has indicated their interest to assist us with the technical support/aid for this purpose.
The Ministry of Health and I have been approached by the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime Minister's Department to assist them in drafting the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the consultancy. Naturally, this is a very specialized area and we have no prior experience on actually developing an NHA mechanism. So I am concerned that the TOR maybe incomplete in its specification of the task required, the duration of the consultancy, costing etc. Also I worry that there may be gaps or loopholes in the TOR that we draft, such that the project will be disjointed or
unfinished.
I would be so grateful for any suggestions or assistance from any members of our network. I am sure there are among us members who either have experience in drafting such a TOR for their own country or has been on the receiving end of actually being a consultant for a NHA development project and has a set of TOR as part of your contract in the past.
If possible, could you please share any sample TOR with us - you could either e-mail me a file attachment or fax me at 603-2823114 (attention: Dr Rozita Halina Hussein). I would be more than happy to pay for any incidental costs of sending any TOR documents to us in Malaysia.
I must thank you in advance for any possible help that you can offer or any sample TOR that you could share with us so that we can have a better idea on how to draft one for our own needs.
Hope to hear from you soon,
Sincerely,
Rozita
4) Discussion paper - Adequacy of public health definitions in OECD framework
We are sharing a paper sent by Jean-Pierre Poullier, which may be of interest to some of you. It concerns the clearly inadequate treatment of public health functions in the provisional OECD Health Accounting Framework.
5) Newsletter from Harbin NHA group
Attached is the Harbin NHA Newsletter. For further information please contact: Dr Du Lexun at <dulexun@public.hr.hl.cn>
6) Update to AP NHA member listing
Miss Kinnie Wong has replaced Ms Vicki Wong as the Hong Kong representative in the network; her contact details are given below. Vicki has moved on to another posting in the Hong Kong SAR government.
Miss Kinnie WONG Kit-yee
Assistant Secretary for Health and Welfare (Medical)
19/F Murray Building
Garden Road
Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 2973 8123
Fax: (852) 2840 0467
E-mail: kkywong@hwb.gcn.gov.hk
Any general queries about this message or the network should be addressed
to health@sri.lanka.net.
Asia Pacific National Health Accounts Network
c/o Health Policy Programme
The Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka
99 St Michael's Road
Colombo 3, SRI LANKA
Tel: +94 1 341 155 (direct), +94 1 431 368, +94 1 431 378
Fax: +94 1 431 395
email: health@sri.lanka.net