In this blog, we look at how economic conditions are likely to further compromise public health financing in the region, how smaller health budgets will be coupled with increasing demands, and what policymakers can do to minimize the negative impact on the health of their populations.

In the language of economists, opportunity cost refers to the return or other forms of benefit that we could have received, but gave up, to take another course of action. In mathematical terms, it is the difference between the utility of what we have chosen and that from the foregone choice. Or, in ...