Costing tools
Reproductive Health Costing Tool
United Nations Population Fund
Designed to estimate the resource requirements and costs of providing an essential package of reproductive/maternal health interventions at country or state/provincial level. Its main purpose is to help countries to quickly cost and create budgets for existing sector strategies and plans, such as Maternal Road Maps or Reproductive Health Action Plans.
In particular, the model calculates:
- The cost of providing/scaling up an essential package of RH interventions (family planning, ANC, delivery care, EmOC, STIs and HIV prevention and treatment);
- the cost of activities/health systems improvements required to improve RH/MH in a country/district (training and supervision, equipment, RHCS, referral system, IEC, etc).
One of the key features of the tool is the incorporation of population dynamics (e.g., the impact family planning has on the demand for maternal and child health services).
Contacts
For access to the Reproductive Health Costing Tool and manual, please contact Howard Friedman (see contact information below):
Summary of main features
| Purpose | Costing of maternal and reproductive health |
| Health MDGs addressed | Mainly 5, but also 4 (newborn health) and 6 (ARV treatment, PMTCT, VCT, some prevention) |
| Scope of interventions | Maternal and reproductive health, interventions to improve the health system |
| Type of software | Excel |
| User manual available | Yes |
| Potential users | Governments, consultants |
| Skills required | Good Excel skills, knowledge of reproductive health, some experience with finance or budgeting |
| Type and length of training required | Depending on background and experience (1-4 days) |
| Costing strategy and methods | Total cost, unit costs |
| Level of aggregation | National/state/provincial |
| Program/system costs included | Yes |
| Time-frame | 5-10 Years |
| Modeling intervention impact or interactions on epidemiology or demography | Models impact of increased use of FP on number of pregnancies and children born and on demand for maternal and newborn health services |
| Output | Cost of RH/MH service package; Cost of necessary heath system investments |
| Automatic generation of reports | Large number of printable tables and graphs |
| Country applications: | Uganda, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, Yemen, Turkey, Georgia, Dominican Republic, Rwanda, Laos |