PMNCH, World Health Organization
Henrik Axelson is a health economist working as a Technical Officer with the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH) at the World Health Organization. Axelson has more than 10 years of experience with multilateral and non-governmental organizations, including the World Bank. He has worked on the design, implementation, and evaluation of health reforms and health financing policies, the costing of interventions needed to achieve the health Millennium Development Goals and analysis of the economic benefits of investing in maternal, newborn and child health in Asia and the Pacific. Axelson works with a team of partners on building the evidence-base on the economics and financing related to MDGs 4 and 5, including costing, cost-benefit analysis, tracking of financial flows and equity in utilization and maternal and child mortality. This analytic work is conducted through fora and networks including the Countdown to 2015, the MNCH Network for Asia and the Pacific and the UN Inter-Agency Group for Costing.
Previously, Axelson was a health economist at the WHO country office in Vietnam, where he worked with the government to strengthen health insurance and other social protection mechanisms. He has also been based in Indonesia, Washington, and Geneva, and has provided technical assistance to several countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Axelson holds a Master's Degree in International Economics and Business from the Stockholm School of Economics, and is currently working on his doctoral dissertation in Health Economics with Lund University, Sweden.