Technical efficiency of human resources for health in Africa

There is growing peer and donor pressure on African countries to utilize available resources more efficiently in a bid to support the ongoing efforts to expand coverage of health interventions with a view to achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals. The purpose of this study was to estimate the technical and scale efficiency of national health systems (NHS) in utilizing human resources for health in African continent. The study applied the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach to estimate the technical efficiency and scale efficiency among the 53 countries of the African Continent. Out of the 38 low-income African countries, 12 countries national health systems manifested a constant returns to scale technical efficiency (CRSTE) score of 100%; 15 countries had a variable returns to scale technical efficiency (VRSTE) score of 100%; and 12 countries had a SE score of one. The average VRSTE score was 95% and the mean scale efficiency (SE) score was 59%; meaning that while on average the degree of inefficiency was only 5% and the magnitude of scale inefficiency was 41%.