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June 2013 |
What does Costing have to do with HIV?
They were all senior policy and technical officers from Ministries of Health or national AIDS programme co-ordinators and represented 17 countries in the English and Dutch-speaking Caribbean. Collaborators from The UWI’s HEU, Centre for Health Economics, the USAID Health Policy Initiative and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) pooled their technical, financial and administrative resources for this capacity building/train-the-trainers Workshop. Experts in the field, including the Caribbean Health Research Council/CARPHA, conducted sessions that were a balance between theory and practice. There was also “hands-on” use of the Spectrum tools. The Costing Workshop exposed them to the Spectrum Model, a model developed and maintained by the Futures Institute out of the United States of America. The Model is a suite of easy-to-use tools that provide policy and decision-makers with critical information so as to make informed decisions. It consolidates earlier versions of individual tools into an integrated package of components with the capability of projecting impacts, resource needs and costs and can play a pivotal role in supporting programmatic and national goals by guiding meaningful responses to the HIV epidemic. The Caribbean joins countries - Lesotho, Mozambique, East and West Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America - which have benefitted from capacity building activities in the Spectrum Model. While the primary focus is on the impact and costs of HIV/AIDS interventions, the tools are applicable to the wider health system. The results give a better understanding of the epidemic and the associated costs of interventions, allowing planners to make more informed decisions on the allocation of resources while keeping an eye on financial sustainability. Decision-makers can better determine the optimal level of funding to attain strategic goals, what is achievable using available resources and the impact of alternative injection of resources on goals and costs. On a broader level, participants dealt with the importance of strategic planning in the modern health environment, assessing and identifying gaps in the health system as key components of the planning stage. The basics of costing and economic evaluation in health were also outlined from the perspective of linking health costs to associated benefits. |
For four days in March, 50 persons huddled together in workshop setting being trained on Costing with a focus on HIV programmes.