AfHEA's MISSION AND OBJECTIVES

The main mission of AfHEA is to improve health outcomes, with special emphasis on the most vulnerable population groups. AfHEA works towards improved health outcomes by promoting high quality and standards in the generation of policy relevant evidence and the use of appropriate health economics tools within the discipline of health economics and financing in Africa.

To this end, we intend to build a strong and vibrant African health economics association, with the following specific objectives:

To serve as a platform for the promotion of the discipline and practice of health economics as well as related policy studies in Africa
To serve as a forum for information sharing and exchange as well as critical debate, among those working in health economics and related fields in Africa
Promote the development of health economics capacity within the African region, with particular emphasis on supporting the needs of African countries to train and retain such experts
Serve as a link between members, as well as African institutions and international health economics organisations such as iHEA, ASHE (US), CES (France), and other regional networks
Promote research and literature of international quality by African health economists, health financing and health policy experts; and support the dissemination of their outputs regionally and internationally
Promote the availability and use of health economics evidence by health policy makers in African countries.

PROCESS OF EMERGENCE OF AfHEA

AfHEA was formally registered as a non-profit company in the UK on the 17th of September 2008. However, the origins of the association go as far back as November 2005 when WHO-AFRO initiated and called the first meeting of the African Health Economics Advisory Committee (AHEAC). The main purpose of AHEAC, a committee set up by WHO-AFRO, was "to provide advice and guidance to the Regional Director on … how to strengthen WHO Member States health economics capacities for generating and using health economics evidence in decision-making." The AHEAC was established in recognition of the problems of lack of health economics capacity and under-utilization of economics tools and skills in African countries. Due to resource constraints, AHEAC could not fully achieve the objectives for which it was established. However, the decision by WHO-AFRO to set up AHEAC served as a catalyst for the establishment of an African health economics association.

In the following years, at meetings of African health financing experts (held in WHO-AFRO offices in Brazzaville), whenever the idea of an African health economics association was raised, there was tremendous enthusiasm for such an organisation to be established. A similar level of enthusiasm was expressed in other gatherings of African health economists (e.g. the meeting of African health economists during the 2005 iHEA congress in Barcelona, Spain).

It was in 2006 that planning for the establishment of an African health economics association actually began. In April 2006, a conference was organised by WHO-AFRO and AHEAC to develop an African Health Financing Strategy. The outcome was a strategy document adopted by African Health Ministers in Addis Ababa in August 2006. At this conference, a meeting of African health economists and health financing experts was held separately on the margins of the main conference. That meeting discussed the state of the discipline and allied ones on the continent, and a decision was taken to set up (as a first step towards establishing an African health economics association) the online discussion forum in order to facilitate the sharing and exchange of experiences and information among members all over the continent. This forum quickly grew to over 100 members, and is still growing.

Discussions in the forum soon turned to the need for a continental network or association, as found in other regions of the world. To gauge true support for the idea and also to solicit ideas on how to design this association to best serve the interests of its future members, a questionnaire survey was organised in August 2007 among potential future members of such an association, both those in the e-forum and outside the forum. The analysis of the survey responses showed overwhelming endorsement of the proposal to set up an association at the earliest opportunity, and also offered many useful ideas for the design of such an association.

Subsequently, a consultative committee was set up, later called the steering committee, in order to lead the process of setting up the association. Dr Chris Atim of Ghana and Prof Di McIntyre of South Africa each played key roles in the process leading up to the setting up of the association, with overall and sustained leadership of the process provided by the former.