The National Health Accounts (NHA) methodology is a tool that allows countries to track the flow of health spending from financial sources to end users. NHA includes estimates of household expenditures, spending that governments have not historically considered when looking at national health expenditures. This paper summarizes how NHA was used to capture general health and HIV/AIDS-specific expenditures in Zambia in 2002. It was that country’s first attempt to assess spending on a disease-specific expenditure. HIV/AIDS-related expenditure estimates show that households and donors are the major financiers of HIV/AIDS care. People living with HIV/AIDS spend 12 times more on health.
