Abstract
National Health Accounts (NHA) is a basic tool of health sector management and policy
development that describes how much a country spends on health, and maps out in detail the sources
and uses of health care expenditures. This report presents the results of the first NHA for the
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which was completed through a collaborative effort of the Ministry of
Health, Royal Medical Services, and Jordan University Hospital, with technical assistance from
USAID's Partnerships for Health Reform Project. In 1998, Jordan spent approximately JD 453.8 million (US$ 647 million) on health, or JD 95
(US$ 136) per capita. Total health expenditures represented 9.12 percent of GDP. The private sector
is the largest source of health funding (47 percent) followed by the public sector (45 percent) and
donors (8 percent). The main policy issues emerging from the NHA results are the high level of total
health expenditures as a percentage of GDP and its implications for the ability to provide health care
services at current level of quality and quantity; the high level of pharmaceutical expenditures (35
percent of total health expenditures); the indiscriminate capital investment in the private sector and
little regulation that has resulted in a surge of private hospitals; and the high level of spending on
curative care (58 percent) as compared to primary care (27 percent). The Jordan NHA team is
working to institutionalize NHA at the national level.