Saturday, April 10, 2010

Public financing of health in developing countries: a cross-national systematic analysis

Source: Chunling Lu, Matthew T Schneider, Paul Gubbins, Katherine Leach-Kemon, Dean Jamison and Christopher JL Murray, The Lancet, Early Online Publication, 9 April 2010

Findings: "In all developing countries, public financing of health in constant US$ from domestic sources increased by nearly 100% (IMF 120%; WHO 88%) from 1995 to 2006. Overall, this increase was the product of rising GDP, slight decreases in the share of GDP spent by government, and increases in the share of government spending on health. At the country level, while shares of government expenditures to health increased in many regions, they decreased in many sub-Saharan African countries. The statistical analysis showed that DAH to government had a negative and significant effect on domestic government spending on health such that for every US$1 of DAH to government, government health expenditures from domestic resources were reduced by $0·43 (p=0) to $1·14 (p=0). However, DAH to the non-governmental sector had a positive and significant effect on domestic government health spending. Both results were robust to multiple specifications and subset analyses. Other factors, such as debt relief, had no detectable effect on domestic government health spending."

There is also an article covering the report in The Guardian.

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