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. 2018 Aug 23;3(4):e000864.
doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2018-000864. eCollection 2018.

Strengthening health security: an intuitive and user-friendly tool to estimate country-level costs

Rebecca Katz  1 , Ellie Graeden  2 , Stephanie Eaneff  2 , Justin Kerr  2
Affiliations

Strengthening health security: an intuitive and user-friendly tool to estimate country-level costs

Rebecca Katz et al. BMJ Glob Health. .

Abstract

Member States of the WHO working to build capacity under the International Health Regulations (IHR) are advised to develop prioritised, costed plans to implement improvements based on the results of voluntary external assessments. Defining the costs associated with capacity building under the IHR, however, has challenged nations, funders and supporting organisations. Most current efforts to develop costed national action plans involve long-term engagements that may take weeks or months to complete. While these efforts have value in and of themselves, there is an urgent need for a rapid-use tool to provide cost estimates regardless of the level of expertise of the personnel assigned to the task. In this paper, we describe a tool that can-in a matter of hours-provide country-level cost estimates for capacity building under the IHR. This paper also describes how the tool can be used in countries, as well as the challenges inherent in any costing process.

Keywords: health policies and all other topics; health policy; health systems; public health.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Home page of online International Health Regulations (IHR) Costing Tool: https://ghscosting.org.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Population, currency, administrative organisation details, public health infrastructure and a series of optional cost assumptions are entered prior to the main costing page.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Example of a costing page from the International Health Regulations (IHR) Costing Tool.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The cost summary shown at the top of the results page.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Cost visualisation by core capacity and core function.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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