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Hi, My name is Eugene RUGIRA, I am a Medical Doctor, currently working in an Non Government Organization called Alliance for Healthy Communities, currently implanting a US Department Of Defense grant that supports HIV Prevention, Care and Treatment in Rwanda Defense Forces Staff, their families and the surrounding communities, and our activities directly support Rwanda in achieving its targets in the fight against HIV. I never had a Health Economics course before but with my daily work, I mix the clinical, management and financial activities.
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The health economics analyzes the portion of the health economy compared to the national overall economy, the affordability of the health on an individual level, and the financial issues of the health system. All this will end up having a direct impact on the health system and specifically to the population health. And a country's population needs to be healthy to develop itself and the country in general; without a healthy population, a country can never develop. Countries need to invest in the health of their people and even individuals invest in their own health. But also the economic well being has a direct positive impact on the health. This is called a bidirectional relationship between human health and economy
3. With the spreed of COVID-19 the principles of health economics must be revisited to adapt to the change and problems caused and lessons learnt from COVID-19 global pandemic. All the principles of health financing will have to respond to problem at hand and start rebuilding and strengthening the health system. These principle include: Notion of scarcity, Supply, Demand, Opportunity cost, discounting, time horizons, Margins, efficiency, Equity. The health economics is now somewhere between emergency response and containment depending on the country.
a) The emergency response: countries have or are taking emergency measures to slow the spread of the virus and treat the critically ill. The immediate health-financing challenge is to mobilize funding for the response. Countries also need to use these resources responsibly.
b) Containment: Many countries have already entered a second phase of pandemic response. They are trying to avoid the collapse of the health system by reinforcing the control measures.
After this pandemic, countries must go through recovery before they start strengthening the health system
c) Recovery: Health systems will high demand for postponed non-essential services raising financing and equity questions. To revive and reinforce health-financing sustainability:
- There might be a change of some policies adopted during the pandemic which could affect long-term health-financing sustainability.
- Some policies implemented during this pandemic can strengthen the health system including reinforced disease surveillance, collaboration between different institutions, the feel of the real cost of health by the governments to increase the portion allocated to health in their budget
- This crisis gives the health financing policy makers the task of breaking what they were doing before the pandemic crisis and start deep changes. This crisis has demonstrated how the health sector is under funded, from there they can change the government and public opinion and increase the funding of the health sector as it has been shown how important a well financed health sector is important. If this is done, then comes the need to use the funding efficiently and equitably. This pandemic has shown how a strong health system is important and that we are in this together.