Mduma, John K.
Description:
In Tanzania, the Ministry of Health publishes the Heath Statistics Abstract, which contains several indicators of health performance disaggregated on regional level. For policy intervention at the regional level, it is necessary to have an indicator which is able to consistently rank the performance of each region. Given that there are several indicators which show the performance of each region, such comparison is not straight forward. One option is to create an aggregated index/indicator from the given standard indicators. We develop such Unified Health Performance Index (UHPI) based in several performance indicators collected in the 1990s. In the construction of the UHPI, the weights of different standard health performance indicators are derived by applying the benefit-of-the-doubt weighting method, which gives regions some freedom to emphasize and prioritize some aspects of indicators, which they perform best over others. The results of our index are compared with those based on simple averages, simple rankings and their policy implications are discussed.