Over 34 participants were trained on national health account from 26 to 30 August 2019 at the National Confederation of Eritrean Workers’ Hall. The National Health Accounts is a process through which countries monitor the flow of money in their health sector.

Honorable Minster of Health, Mrs Amina Nurhussein congratulated the participants for their commitment and hard work and made a pledge that much more is expected of them. She also called on all line ministries and partners for more collaboration in order to achieve Universal Health Coverage and Sustainable Development Goals.

From WHO side, Dr Martins Ovberedjo, WHO Representative to Eritrea appreciated the strong government commitment and commended the dedication of the participants. Furthermore, he encouraged the participants to use the existing data and to do more advocacy meetings. Eritrea being as a model for scoring remarkable achievements has to share its experiences with the World.  Dr Martins assured the participants WHO’s continuous support to the government of the state of Eritrea.

The training was facilitated by Prof. Benjamin Nganda, Health Economist from IST-WHO and Mr Ezra trever, NHA consultant. ”NHA are not a panacea.” Said prof. Benjamin. “They are a starting point which may identify key areas for further work.” He added. NHA can be a useful entry point for policy dialogue particularly in relation to issues such as resource envelopes and prioritization of scarce resources and sustainability.

Earlier, an advocacy meeting was held on 23 August 2019 at Blue Room Hall. The participants were drawn from Ministry of Health, Ministry of National Development, Ministry of Finance and WHO.

The training involved several presentations, group work, practical exercises and attracted several questions, discussions and suggestions.

At the end, the participants made the following recommendations:

• Strong leadership steering teams representing MOH, MOF and MoND
• Advocacy and consensus on conducting household expenditure assessment to capture and represent out of pocket (OOP) data
• Provision of subsequent, complimentary training on NHA data analysis
• Finalization and endorsement of NHA work plan for year 2017/18