Myanmar Improving Public Financial Management for Health Services : Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Service Delivery in the Wake of COVID

Myanmar exhibits poor health outcomes and lags regional peers. Myanmar’s Human Capital Index (HCI) score is 0.47, compared to a regional average of 0.60. Every year, 2,000 pregnant women and 50,000 children die from preventable causes, and 29 perce...

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Main Author: World Bank
Format: Report
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/439921613542231195/PFM-in-Health-assessment
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36133
id okr-10986-36133
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-361332021-08-17T05:10:46Z Myanmar Improving Public Financial Management for Health Services : Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Service Delivery in the Wake of COVID World Bank DISEASE PREVALENCE HEALTH FINANCING HEALTH EXPENDITURE PANDEMIC IMPACT PUBLIC FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT HEALTH SERVICE DELIVERY BUDGET PROCESS RESOURCE ALLOCATION STAFF RECRUITMENT PUBLIC INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTABILITY FINANCIAL REPORTING Myanmar exhibits poor health outcomes and lags regional peers. Myanmar’s Human Capital Index (HCI) score is 0.47, compared to a regional average of 0.60. Every year, 2,000 pregnant women and 50,000 children die from preventable causes, and 29 percent of children under age 5 are stunted. While there are many reasons for these poor outcomes, the effective coverage (access, utilization, and quality) of service delivery in the health sector plays a fundamental role. Budget execution remains prominent among PFM challenges in the health sector, demonstrated by several roadblocks to spending on time and on target. There is an urgent need to better understand the PFM bottlenecks that affect frontline service delivery. Budgeted expenditure for the Ministry of Health and Sports (MoHS) has been increasing, but actual spending has been declining. Budgeted expenditure increased for the MoHS from 0.86 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014-15 to 1.15 percent of GDP in 2017-18. However, actual expenditure by MoHS has declined from 1.0 percent to 0.8 percent of GDP in the same period. The increase in resources available through the budget allocation process had helped expand access and availability of health services to some extent, but it has not been able to address significantly the major health challenges and achieve better outcomes at population level. This is partly due to weaknesses at several points along the chain of financial management within MoHS and at the point of service delivery. The main objective of this report on PFM in the health sector is to improve service delivery and the efficiency of health financing at all levels of health care in Myanmar. This will be achieved by identifying and analyzing relevant PFM bottlenecks and providing recommendations to address them. Secondary objectives are to deepen the understanding of PFM arrangements in Myanmar’s health sector, including the PFM reforms required under the health financing reforms for UHC, and strengthen the communication and coordination between MoHS and MOPFI to ensure sustainability of reforms going forward. 2021-08-16T19:18:24Z 2021-08-16T19:18:24Z 2020-08-27 Report http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/439921613542231195/PFM-in-Health-assessment http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36133 English CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Economic & Sector Work Economic & Sector Work :: Public Expenditure Review East Asia and Pacific Myanmar
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic DISEASE PREVALENCE
HEALTH FINANCING
HEALTH EXPENDITURE
PANDEMIC IMPACT
PUBLIC FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
HEALTH SERVICE DELIVERY
BUDGET PROCESS
RESOURCE ALLOCATION
STAFF RECRUITMENT
PUBLIC INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT
ACCOUNTABILITY
FINANCIAL REPORTING
spellingShingle DISEASE PREVALENCE
HEALTH FINANCING
HEALTH EXPENDITURE
PANDEMIC IMPACT
PUBLIC FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
HEALTH SERVICE DELIVERY
BUDGET PROCESS
RESOURCE ALLOCATION
STAFF RECRUITMENT
PUBLIC INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT
ACCOUNTABILITY
FINANCIAL REPORTING
World Bank
Myanmar Improving Public Financial Management for Health Services : Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Service Delivery in the Wake of COVID
geographic_facet East Asia and Pacific
Myanmar
description Myanmar exhibits poor health outcomes and lags regional peers. Myanmar’s Human Capital Index (HCI) score is 0.47, compared to a regional average of 0.60. Every year, 2,000 pregnant women and 50,000 children die from preventable causes, and 29 percent of children under age 5 are stunted. While there are many reasons for these poor outcomes, the effective coverage (access, utilization, and quality) of service delivery in the health sector plays a fundamental role. Budget execution remains prominent among PFM challenges in the health sector, demonstrated by several roadblocks to spending on time and on target. There is an urgent need to better understand the PFM bottlenecks that affect frontline service delivery. Budgeted expenditure for the Ministry of Health and Sports (MoHS) has been increasing, but actual spending has been declining. Budgeted expenditure increased for the MoHS from 0.86 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014-15 to 1.15 percent of GDP in 2017-18. However, actual expenditure by MoHS has declined from 1.0 percent to 0.8 percent of GDP in the same period. The increase in resources available through the budget allocation process had helped expand access and availability of health services to some extent, but it has not been able to address significantly the major health challenges and achieve better outcomes at population level. This is partly due to weaknesses at several points along the chain of financial management within MoHS and at the point of service delivery. The main objective of this report on PFM in the health sector is to improve service delivery and the efficiency of health financing at all levels of health care in Myanmar. This will be achieved by identifying and analyzing relevant PFM bottlenecks and providing recommendations to address them. Secondary objectives are to deepen the understanding of PFM arrangements in Myanmar’s health sector, including the PFM reforms required under the health financing reforms for UHC, and strengthen the communication and coordination between MoHS and MOPFI to ensure sustainability of reforms going forward.
format Report
author World Bank
author_facet World Bank
author_sort World Bank
title Myanmar Improving Public Financial Management for Health Services : Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Service Delivery in the Wake of COVID
title_short Myanmar Improving Public Financial Management for Health Services : Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Service Delivery in the Wake of COVID
title_full Myanmar Improving Public Financial Management for Health Services : Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Service Delivery in the Wake of COVID
title_fullStr Myanmar Improving Public Financial Management for Health Services : Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Service Delivery in the Wake of COVID
title_full_unstemmed Myanmar Improving Public Financial Management for Health Services : Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Service Delivery in the Wake of COVID
title_sort myanmar improving public financial management for health services : challenges and opportunities for improving service delivery in the wake of covid
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2021
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/439921613542231195/PFM-in-Health-assessment
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36133
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