Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The interest in health economics, policy and efficient ways of financing health care is growing in Nigeria and other west African countries. A recent conference in Ghana had in attendance several academics, researchers and policy makers from west Africa who work in the areas of health policy and systems. The HPRG Nigeria participated strongly in that conference and has, through its research activities remained committed to providing relevant information for evidence based policy making. It is believed that with the increasing interest and activity in development of appropriate health policies, policy makers, health care providers and the civil society would progressively improve on use of evidence generated by researchers and academics in Nigeria and other west African countries to improve health policies and implementation practices. Individuals and institutions involved in health economics and systems research and learning thus have an enormous task of generating and communicating relevant evidence, and the overrall goal of isolated or collective action should be to make such evidence of high quality and tailored to prevailing political, social, institutional and economic context characteristics of the the sub-continent and indeed the whole of Africa.