Technical Efficiency of Health Systems in the WHO African Region

Book excerpt: Although technical inefficiencies persist in the health systems of the WHO Africa Region, there are modest improvement between 2014 and 2019. However, efforts to significantly increase funding for health especially from domestic resources need to be pursued given the fact that, efficiency gains alone will only yield a maximum of 34% improvement in resource availability in Africa -assuming all countries are performed efficiently. The factors negatively associated with technical efficiency need to be targeted and tackled by policymakers employing a system wide approach. Lack of or incomplete data was cited as a critical limitation to the level and accuracy of the input and output variables examined in the studies. African countries need to build strong data capture and storage systems to improve the accuracy of research within the region.