BMJ  2005;331:1137-1140 (12 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7525.1137

Education and debate

Achieving the millennium development goals for health

Methods to assess the costs and health effects of interventions for improving health in developing countries

¹ Health Systems Financing, Evidence and Information for Policy, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, ² Costs, Effectiveness, Expenditure and Priority Setting, World Health Organization, ³ Health Systems Financing, World Health Organization, ⁴ School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Australia

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Introduction

Assessment of the cost effectiveness of interventions designed to achieve the millennium development goals for health is complex. The methods must be capable of showing the efficiency with which current and possible new resources are used, and incorporating interactions between concurrent interventions and the effect of expanding coverage on unit costs.¹ They should also allow valid comparisons across a wide range of interventions. Here we describe how the standardised cost effectiveness methods used in the World Health Organization's Choosing Interventions that are Cost Effective (CHOICE) project have tackled these issues.

Level of analysis

The analysis was performed for 14 regions classified by WHO according to their epidemiological grouping (table A on bmj.com). The regional results (except if not relevant to the disease area, for example, malaria) are available at www.who.int/choice, but the papers in this series give details for just two regions: Afr-E, which includes countries in sub-Saharan Africa with high child . . . [Full text of this article]

Definition and selection of interventions

Intervention costs

Classification and measurement of costs

Variations in scope and scale

Assessing the effect of interventions

Population health effects

Calculating cost effectiveness

Interpreting results

Uncertainty

Conclusions

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