1. Organization, activities and role of
HEU in health sector capacity
building of Bangladesh
Md. Hafizur Rahman
Director, Health Economics Unit
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare

2. Background
• Health Economics Unit (HEU) was established in 1994 as a
project under the fourth population and health project (FPHP)
• HEU started its journey with the support of the then Overseas
Development Administration (ODA), now department for
International Development (DFID) of UK.
• It was aimed at developing an overall health economics
capacity in the country so that it can facilitate to ensure
delivery of cost-effective health care services, efficiently
through providing policy guidance to the Government.
• However, to fill up the knowledge gap by the academicians in
1998 IHE was established and HEU and IHE were in same
OP.

3. Present status of HEU
 Since 2011 it has been transferred to revenue
budget .
 Now it is a unit of the Ministry of Health and
Family Welfare headed by one Director General .
 It is within the organogram of ministry.
 Health economics , Financing and GNSP is one of
the 32 OPs of the ministry.
 Two components-a. Health Economics and b.
Gender, NGO and Stakeholders Participation.

4. Major activities of HEU
Policy Advice
Capacity building
Conducting
Research
Dissemination
workshops

5. Policy advice
Policy paper/Policy
input
So far 32 Policy
Briefs prepared
Conduct research from HEU
Disseminate
research Findings

6. Contd…….
• Sometimes HEU provides technical input as
per requirements made by the ministry.
-for example : HEU is now working on RAF

7. Research
• HEU mainly conducts evidence based research
related to health economics and health financing
issues.
• Research studies are conducted in house and
also commissioned to external research
organizations.
• Number of research papers and Research Notes
so far prepared by HEU are 49 and 21 accordingly.
• HEU has also another branch that deals Gender,
NGO, Stakeholders and Participation.

8. Research Trend
8
7 7
6
5
4
No of Research
3 3
2 2 2
1 1
0
2007-2008 2008-2009 2009-2010 2010-2011 2011-2012

9. Dissemination
seminars/ workshops/
1 conferences
2 publishing bulletins
establishing
3 networks, Preparing CDs

10. Capacity building
• It provides training for the GOB officials on health
economics and GNSP issues.
• Every year about 150-160 participants from
MOHFW, DGHS, DGFP, ERD, PLANNING
COMMISSION, IMED and NIPORT receive training from
HEU .
• The trainings cover economic evaluation in health
care, costing procedure, health care financing, research
methodology, expenditure tracking, gender and equity
issues etc.

11. Trend of Training
12
10
8
6 Local Training
Foreign Training
4
2
0
2007-2008 2008-2009 2009-2010 2010-2011 2011-2012

12. Constraints
• Don’t know about available resources
• No specific mechanism has been developed to
pool the resources
• Insufficient managerial capacity to utilize the
available resources.
• Health Economics might be still is an alien
term-----

13. Way Out
 Explore resource pooling options
 Strengthening networking
 Build institutional memory
 Explore the opportunities and make them
functional to the best use of the available
resources
 Capacity development as a continuous process
 3 strong Cs ( Coordination, communication and
cooperation) are needed.

14. Health economics: the science of
optimism?
• Health economics: “the cheerful face of the dismal
science”
• Two certainties in life: death and taxes
• Health economics is concerned with
– Caring death with efficient health care
– Reducing taxes by using good measurement and
management of costs and outcomes data
• Health economists should be creative agents
concerned with improving population health at least
cost

15. Thank you