Evaluating healthy days of life gained from health projects.

This paper draws attention to the importance of incorporating weights for time preference and productivity in using the concept of healthy days of life lost to evaluate healthy projects. Two alternative health strategies are defined for Ghana and evaluated, over a range of discount rates from 0 to 20%, with regard to the present value of productive life saved. It is found that the relative ranking of the projects is sensitive to the choice of discount rates. The sensitivity of disease rankings to the underlying morbidity and fatality rates is also examined and the results underline the importance of obtaining better epidemiological baseline data and information on project effectiveness if the potential usefulness of the healthy days of life approach to project evaluation is to be fully realized.