Health Finance and Governance project helping to improve understanding of national funding and spending on health

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Health Accounts play an important role in a country’s health policy and future decision making for health expenditures.

Guyana has achieved significant progress in funding the national response to HIV but faces challenges related to scaling up of Treat All in an environment of declining donor funding. The USAID-funded Health Finance and Governance (HFG) project, in collaboration with PAHO/WHO, has supported a National Health Accounts (NHA) estimation exercise in Guyana to improve understanding of national funding and spending on health. A National Health Accounts dissemination meeting was held in Georgetown on 3 August, at which it was revealed that the Government’s share of HIV spending increased from 25 percent in 2015 to 64 percent in 2016, indicating increasing domestic resource mobilization for HIV.

Guyana’s Health Accounts will play an important role in the country’s health policy and future decision making for health expenditures. Ms. Julia Henn, Director of Health and HIV/AIDS Office, USAID/Eastern and Southern Caribbean, described the National Health Accounts as a “goldmine of information for policymakers.” One key recommendation is for Guyana to better leverage the private sector in order to diversify domestic funding sources for health and HIV. According to Mr. Tesfaye Dereje, Senior Health Finance Specialist of the HFG project, “Guyana is off to a great start.”