P4H provided platform and promoted dialogues, experience sharing between countries, regional office, global experts and global coordination desk. The Country Focal Person (CFP) Namibia had the opportunity to have regular interactions with other CFPs like the CFP in Ghana where the process of introducing the guide for national budgetary dialogue had taken place before Namibia.
There was experience sharing of implementation of streams of work undertaken through the ACT-A initiative in Papua New Guinea (PNG). PNG was selected to be an initial test of the applicability and usefulness of the budget dialogue analysis. Considerable work had already been undertaken by WHO and others to review the Public Finance Management (PFM) and health financing systems of PNG as well as the COVID-19 expenditure allocations from government and development partners. This provided opportunity of learning from processes undertaken in PNG and usefulness of the workstream.
Ghana also shared the activities undertaken under ACT-A health systems connector:
Activities conducted in Ghana under ACT-A health systems connector
Health Financing Case Studies:
- Private sector engagement to identify and address health system bottlenecks associated with the private health sector and the delivery of COVID-19 tools;
- Supporting Ghana in undertaking Cross-Programmatic Efficiency Analysis (CPEA) related to the delivery of COVID-19-related services and interventions within the context of the overall health system;
- Collecting and analysing data on the impact of the COVID crisis on the financial situation of autonomous hospitals in Ghana;
- Assessing Ghana’s adjustments made in purchasing arrangements as part of the COVID-19 health sector response and analyze its impacts on the health system and health financing system as well as on UHC objectives.
PFM/Governance related areas include:
- Supporting the institutionalization of a system of management accounting for internal decision-making;
- support to operationalize the recommendations of the WHO PBB study. This is also to take advantage of the potential benefits of PBB in terms of joint budgeting across health programs and inputs, which contributes to efficiencies across the sector.
- Refreshing of strategies and development of information systems within the context of building back better/resilient health system.
Reference: Excerpt from the email from ADDAI FRIMPONG, Kingsley addaik@who.int on 20 October 2021 19:02
The CFP also had opportunities to learn from experience of Ethiopia. Ethiopia at time was already ahead. The CFP in Ethiopia already had a meeting with the Ministry Of Health (MOH) to let them know about the opportunity. Knowing already what was already done in Ethiopia and other countries to introduce this to MOH was very helpful to the CFP Namibia.
