According to the WHO, every year 100 million people are pushed into poverty because they have to pay for health services directly. Even richer countries struggle to keep up with the rising costs of technological advances in healthcare and the increasing health demands of their populations. Low-income countries often have insufficient resources to ensure access to even a very basic set of health services.

This is an initiative of the African Development Bank in partnership with Knoema. Its main objective is to collect monthly price data for essential health care services in Africa to facilitate effective responses to health challanges African countries face, such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.