To establish an academic within the University of Dhaka for teaching and training in order to develop, strengthen and build up capacity of the health sector professionals, academicians, and health service managers, and for organizing and conducting practical policy-oriented research for the Sector. The Government has increasingly felt the need for training of the personnel of the sector and conducting research in health economics, and started sending officials abroad to study health economics. It later became evident that the cost of overseas training of each person is so high that the government will not be able to train the required number of personnel using the small amount of fund received from the donors. In such a situation, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) approached the University of Dhaka to establish an Institute to offer post-graduate degrees and conduct training programmes in Health Economics and carry out research on health economic issues. As a result, the Institute of Health Economics (IHE) was established in the University of Dhaka in July 1998 with the financial support of the Department for International Development (DFID), and the University of Dhaka