AfHEA-AHPSR Competition Results Announcement

	Af HEA

	Association Africaine d'Economie et Politique de la Santé African Health Economics and Policy Association

Anglais

Inaugural Conference of the African Health Economics and Policy Association (AfHEA)
Accra - Ghana, 10th - 12th March 2009
AfHEA-AHPSR Competition Results Announcement

The African Health Economics and Policy Association (AfHEA) and the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHPSR) are pleased to announce the results of our jointly-sponsored recent competition for analytical papers on the theme of user fees for health services in Africa.

The competition attracted many excellent submissions from all over the world. A bilingual evaluation team headed by Prof Lucy Gilson of the University of Cape Town in South Africa assessed all the papers using criteria agreed beforehand. Each paper was assessed independently by at least two referees.

The judges finally came up with the following five winners:

1. Aida Zerbo (Burkinabe student at Health Economics Unit of the West African post graduate management studies centre in Senegal, CESAG)
Le juste prix pour la santé !

2. Morbé M Ngartelbaye (WHO economist, Chad), Dr Itama M Christian (public health specialist, WHO-Chad), Naïbei M Nathan (IT specialist, Chad)
Etude socio-économique sur les coûts et sur l’accessibilité financière des populations aux soins de santé à l’Est du Tchad

3. Idowu D Araoyinbo (Medical Research Council, Cape Town, South Africa) and John E Ataguba (Health Economics Unit, Cape Town, South Africa)
User fees in Africa: from theory and evidence, what next?

4. Anne Kangethe (Post graduate student at University of Georgia, Athens, USA)
User Fees for Health Services in Africa

5. Charles Birungi (Student, Faculty of Health Sciences, Uganda Martyrs University, Kampala)
When user fee is a necessity of life: what role for policy in Uganda?

Ms Aida Zerbo's paper was adjudged the best overall. In addition a sixth contestant, Chigozie Jesse Uneke, of the Innovative Health Research Group, Nigeria, almost tied with the fifth winner above, and the AfHEA management have decided that, subject to funding availability, a consolation prize consisting of sponsorship to attend the conference will be awarded to this contestant. AfHEA staff will shortly be in touch with the winners to notify each of them of the modalities for claiming the prizes.

We congratulate all the winners of this competition and thank every one of the contestants for their interest and enthusiasm for this exercise. As co-sponsors, we think this was a worthwhile exercise and hope that it serves as a model for AfHEA's future efforts to encourage African scholarship in the fields of health economics and financing.

We also want to take the opportunity to record our grateful thanks to the evaluation team for a sterling job and for delivering their evaluation results on time.

The African Health Economics and Policy Association (AfHEA)
The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHPSR)