Financing HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis interventions in Estonia (2007)

This report presents current progress within the project “Scaling up treatment and care for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) and accelerating prevention within the health system in the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania”. In particular, the report presents a detailed cost analysis of public health programmes covering all main sources of financing and services provided to the target population – HIV/AIDS and TB patients – in Estonia. The authors synthesize the results in a chart showing the flow of funds, highlighting relevant organizational and financial links among the different components of the health system.

The analysis of the flow of funds provides an overview of the financing system through the four functions: revenue collection, resource pooling, service purchasing and service provision. The analysis enables policy-makers to assess potential areas of coordination and synergies among several agents within the health system. Costs are estimated for the year 2005.

Through the analysis of the flow of funds and findings of the project, some critical issues emerge in fragmentation of financing, limited active purchasing, missing services, patients’ perspectives, and health providers’ perspectives. The Estonian HIV/AIDS-TB working group shares the recommendations for addressing the main critical issues and supporting the project’s follow up.