Policy Brief: Pharmaceutical Expenditure Tracking in Benin (2020 Data)

Access to accurate pharmaceutical expenditure (PE) data and the ability to use this data are necessary to inform government, donor, and partner decisions. However, detailed PE data is often left out of expenditure estimates.
The data needed to track pharmaceutical spending in more detail tends to be large in volume and not always compiled in an accessible way. Many countries lack the capacity to collect, analyze, and use this data to inform decision-making. The System of Health Accounts (SHA) 2011 manual does not provide detailed guidance on how to collect PE data, what type of information to collect, or how to analyze and map that data.
Acknowledging this gap, the MTaPS Program and the Local Health System Sustainability project jointly implemented an activity to produce a resource that helps country health accounts (HA) teams track pharmaceutical spending more accurately through the SHA 2011 framework and build the capacity of pharmaceutical decision-makers to use HA data to improve planning and policy decisions. The first PE tracking exercise was conducted in Burkina Faso in 2021 to develop the PE tracking guideline, which was then piloted in Benin.