Section 2: How much should countries spend on health (in comparison to three different health financing benchmarks)?

[jm-rivera]

An issue to track our discussion on what should be included in this section, methodology, etc.

[nupur-parikh]

The three different health financing benchmarks are as follows:

1. Abuja Declaration (15% of GDP should be spent on health by the government)-- given this is a target agreed to by AU member states we should only evaluate how these countries measure against this target. Time period for evaluation: 2001-2020 because the pledge was made in 2001 and is still in effect. 2. Chatham House target for UHC (5% of GDP should be spent on health)-- this target is more general and is not limited to AU member states or specific income groups
2. Chatham House per capita target (US$86 per capita)--this target is more general and is not limited to AU member states or specific income groups

I think we would only use source "domestic general government expenditure" for these not total health expenditure across all sources, but am not 100% sure on this. I believe Gbemi uses domestic general government expenditure for the DRM dashboard so am referencing her methodology to inform this section.

[jm-rivera]

Thanks @nupur-parikh. just wanted to check:

1. For the Abuja Declaration, we're looking at domestic general government expenditure, right? It is 15% of GDP or 15% of government spending? 15% of GDP seems high based on the below
2. For number 2, how come that target is a lot lower than above? Or is above not of GDP?
3. Is that target just in current prices? And what type of spending should it cover?

[nupur-parikh]

1. Yes sorry it's 15% of government spending, that was typo on my part thank you for catching that!
2. The target will also be lower because it is a Universal Health Coverage target rather than a general health spending target, so basically they are saying if countries spend at least 5% of GDP on health UHC will be achieved by 2030. This would also be looking at government health expenditure alone rather than total health expenditure.
3. Great question, I just read through the original paper that published this target and it seems that the target is based on 2012 USD terms, so extremely outdated, would we have to convert to current prices to make this more relevant? This should also be looking at government health expenditure.

[nupur-parikh]

Visualization idea: something similar to this with annotations for the two commitments. Maybe one bar chart to have the Abuja Declaration + 5% UHC target on the same chart and another one for the US$86 per capita target. Time frame would be 2000-2020. Groupings: all African countries with data

[jm-rivera]

Chart 1 Based on Abuja The main message would be:

• Few (none) countries meet the 15% goal.
• Over time the situation has barely improved (or maybe it has improved?)

We would show:

• Changes every 5 years (2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020)
• Bin the data into reasonable % ranges
• Use a column chart with a range annotation for >15% (even if there are no countries in it)
• Show tables with country breakdown and % on hover/click

Chart 2 Maybe TBC @nupur-parikh