Video: why is it important to use healthcare resources efficiently?

And how can it be done? We share lessons from Uganda and elsewhere.

Improving the effectiveness of available health resources in low- and middle-income countries has increasingly become important, as many countries attempt to map out their paths towards achieving universal health coverage (UHC).

For many of these countries, a combination of increased health coverage targets, an increase of both communicable and non-communicable diseases, and (in some instances) a reduction in global support towards the health sector has enhanced the need to improve value for money in this sector.

Tessa Tan Torres (World Health Organization) and two members of our health team, Tafara Ngwaru and Tomas Lievens, discuss how technical efficiency can be achieved. We focus particularly on a UNAIDS-funded project to improve HIV/AIDS efficiency savings in Uganda, which uses a metric that could also be used beneficially in other countries.

“Without having efficient health systems, we will not achieve universal health coverage,” says Tomas Lievens, Principal Consultant for Health at OPM, “So, in that way, technical efficiency is really a priority, I think, for many countries.”

Image credit: Adam Jan Figel / Shutterstock.com