Efficiency of Health System Units in Africa

Despite spending huge sums of money on health every year the African regions burden of disease is persistently high. Most of the countries in the region are lagging behind in achieving the health-related United Nations Millennium Development Goals. The African regions dismal health situation has largely been blamed on weaknesses pertaining to such factors as health leadership and governance, service delivery, health workforce, medicines, vaccines, and health technologies; health information; and health system financing that have undermined the capacity of health systems of countries in the region to improve population health without wastage of resources. Institutionalising health system efficiency monitoring, as a basis for the design and implementation of appropriate policy interventions, has been proposed as an effective way of curbing wastage of health system inputs.

EFFICIENCY OF HEALTH SYSTEM UNITS IN AFRICA is the first book of its kind on application of the data envelopment analysis technique to examine the efficiency of health system decision-making units in Africa. The book interlaces lecture notes with research articles and case studies to equip students and practitioners of economics, operations research, management science, and public health with knowledge and skills for undertaking technical efficiency, allocative efficiency, cost efficiency, and total factor productivity analyses.