Budgeting For Health Chapter 8: Strategizing national health in the 21st century: a handbook
- Dheepa Rajan, Helene Barroy, Karin Stenberg
- Jan 2016
- World Health Organization (WHO)
- International
Engaging in budget preparation, understanding guiding principles of budgeting as well as the political dynamics that enable the budget elaboration and approval process, is essential for health planners and managers. In many countries, the consequences of not doing so means that health policy-making, planning, costing and budgeting take place independently of each other, leading to a misalignment between health priorities and allocation and use of resources. Health is financed by public and private funds. To make progress toward universal health coverage (UHC), a predominant reliance on public, compulsory, prepaid funds is necessary. Therefore, the way budgets are formed, allocated and used in the health sector is at the core of the UHC agenda. This chapter outlines the overall budget process for the public sector, discusses the specific role of health within it, in particular the role of the ministry of health (MoH) and other health sector stakeholders, to provide timely inputs into the budgeting process.
