UNFPA EECARO, United Nations Population Fund Regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, in joint cooperation with UNFPA Country Office in Turkmenistan, initiated a regional workshop on budgeting of the National Health Programs with participation of the representatives of the national healthcare organizations from Albania, Tajikistan, Kosovo, Macedonia and Turkmenistan.

The overall goal of the regional initiative is to contribute to improving of efficient and effective implementation of the national programs in line with effective management of financial resources in the transparent and responsible way.

The workshop was conducted by the international consultant from Futures Institute Ms. Rachel Sanders, who introduced the OneHealth Tool, a new software tool designed to strengthen health system analysis, costing and financing scenarios at the country level. OneHealth is the first tool to present the detailed components of these existing tools in a uniform format and link them together.

The tool is modular in format and can easily be adapted to different country contexts to develop the actual costing/budgeting of the national health programmes. OneHealth enables countries to calculate and plan in the context of national and sub-national health processes, and it helps them to plan and spend those funds for best effect.

During the regional workshop the consultant shared good practices on budgeting of the national health programs and delivered the practical skills based module on applications of the OneHealth tool to the budgeting of state health programs.

The new initiative will enable the national healthcare institutions in the region to support Ministry of Health (MoH) in their respective countries in establishing appropriate processes to introduce and/or sustain the business practices of developing, implementing and reviewing developed budget for the national health programs at all levels of health system.