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National Health Accounts and Public Expenditure Reviews: Redundant or Complementary Tools?

Government and donor promotion of both National Health Accounts (NHA) and Public Expenditure Reviews (PER) raises the question, Is there a need to conduct NHA in countries that are undertaking PER and vice versa, or are these tools redundant? This brief notes the similarities and distinctions between the two tools, and points the way forward.

This issue is of particular concern to African countries and to development partners including the World Bank that are increasingly implementing NHA and conducting an increasing number of PERs in Africa (of 155 PERs undertaken by the Bank from 1957 to 1993, 45 percent were in the Africa region).

Published: Jan 1 2009