scholarly journals Women in Parliament and Public Health Expenditure: Evidence from Sub-Saharan African Countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-76
Author(s):  
Gael Fokam ◽  
Paloma Mbengono ◽  
Guilain Sato ◽  
Willy Noumessi ◽  
Dessy-Karl Tadadjeu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Expenditure ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Public Health Expenditure ◽  
Women In Parliament ◽  
Sub Saharan

scholarly journals The effect of the quality of institutions on the relationship between public health expenditure and the infant mortality rate: evidence from the PVAR (X) and PSTR approaches

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-35
Author(s):  
Arthur Evariste KOUASSI ◽  
Ya Assanhoun Guillaume KOUASSI ◽  
Nogbou Andetchi Aubin AMANZOU
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Mortality Rate ◽  
Infant Mortality ◽  
Health Expenditure ◽  
Infant Mortality Rate ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Important Indicator ◽  
Institutional Variables ◽  
Public Health Expenditure ◽  
Sub Saharan

Infant mortality is a major health problem in developing countries. It is an important indicator of a country's public health as it goes hand in hand with socio-economic conditions and many others. Public health spending has been committed to reducing this scourge. This has led to the completion of numerous studies which have yielded mixed results. The main objective of this study is to test the effect of public health expenditure (% GDP) on the infant mortality rate, taking into account the role that institutional quality can play. To achieve this, we use two approaches which are the autoregressive vector panel model with exogenous variables (PVAR (X)) and the smooth threshold regression model (PSTR) on annual data covering the period 2002-2016 and covering 37 African countries. Sub-Saharan. Our main results through the PVAR (X) reveal that in the absence of institutional variables, public health expenditure has a negative and significant effect on the infant mortality rate, whereas, in the presence of the various institutional variables, this effect is still negative but is no longer significant. Our results show that the presence of institutions halves the weight of public health expenditure in explaining the infant mortality rate. In addition, our results show through the PSTR that there is a certain level of institutional qualities that these countries must achieve for public health expenditure to positively affect infant mortality rates. These thresholds oscillate for all the institutional variables around 7%. Taking institutional variables into account will help reduce infant mortality in Sub-Saharan African countries.

scholarly journals Convergence in public health expenditure across the Sub-Saharan African countries: does club convergence matter?

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ousmane Traoré
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Equilibrium State ◽  
Health Expenditure ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Club Convergence ◽  
Regional Economic ◽  
Public Health Expenditure ◽  
Convergence Clubs ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Ssa Countries

Abstract Background Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries that currently face enormous healthcare challenges have implemented national health policies focusing on regional or international health commitments. These health commitments generally promote new healthcare financing policies (e.g., health insurance, user fee exemption and results-based financing) with the objective of providing ever-larger population cohorts with human capital and better health in particular. To achieve this, governments must involve themselves more fully in their respective healthcare sectors through the mobilisation of public funding. Objective This paper aims to examine convergence in health expenditure throughout SSA. The findings of club convergence will allow a robust comparison of health indicators between countries and will be suitable for the adjustment of health policies to foster the efficiency of such policies at the regional and/or country level. Such findings could also help with the conception and implementation of health policies at the regional level. Methods We used the methodology of convergence analysis based on dynamic factor modelling leading to the logt regression to test for full convergence, club convergence and club clustering of health expenditure on a balanced panel of 44 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa spanning the period from 2000 to 2016. Results Overall, our results do not support the hypothesis that all SSA countries converge to a single equilibrium state regarding public health expenditure. When testing for club convergence, the results highlight eight convergence clubs and one group of diverging countries. Indeed, performing the club clustering algorithm reveals the existence of three convergence clubs and the diverging group. The three clubs consist of 12, 14 and 14 members, respectively, where convergence is found to occur among different regional economic organisations. Conclusion Our findings indicate that SSA governments should increase spending on healthcare in order to align their healthcare systems with a global convergence model. To foster the convergence to a single equilibrium state in public health expenditure, attention could be paid to strengthening integration within the various regional economic organisations and to the coordination and integration of healthcare policies within and across convergence clubs throughout SSA.

Empirical analysis of factors influencing the public health expenditure in Malaysia

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Kok Wooi Yap ◽  
Doris Padmini Selvaratnam
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Mortality Rate ◽  
Infant Mortality ◽  
Health Expenditure ◽  
Price Index ◽  
Infant Mortality Rate ◽  
Public Health Expenditure ◽  
The Public ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Per Capita

This study aims to investigate the determinants of public health expenditure in Malaysia. An Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach proposed by Pesaran & Shin (1999) and Pesaran et al. (2001) is applied to analyse annual time series data during the period from 1970 to 2017. The study focused on four explanatory variables, namely per capita gross domestic product (GDP), healthcare price index, population aged 65 years and above, as well as infant mortality rate. The bounds test results showed that the public health expenditure and its determinants are cointegrated. The empirical results revealed that the elasticity of government health expenditure with respect to national income is less than unity, indicating that public health expenditure in Malaysia is a necessity good and thus the Wagner’s law does not exist to explain the relationship between public health expenditure and economic growth in Malaysia. In the long run, per capita GDP, healthcare price index, population aged more than 65 years, and infant mortality rate are the important variables in explaining the behaviour of public health expenditure in Malaysia. The empirical results also prove that infant mortality rate is significant in influencing public health spending in the short run. It is noted that macroeconomic and health status factors assume an important role in determining the public health expenditure in Malaysia and thus government policies and strategies should be made by taking into account of these aspects.

Crowdsourcing Covid-19 signals in sub-Saharan Africa: Leveraging digital contributor networks for participatory surveillance of Covid-19 symptoms and deaths (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ngozi A Erondu ◽  
Sagal A Ali ◽  
Mohamed Ali ◽  
Schadrac C Agbla
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Surveillance Systems ◽  
Health Seeking ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Cross Sectional Survey ◽  
Local Networks ◽  
The World ◽  
Sub Saharan

BACKGROUND In sub-Saharan Africa, underreporting of cases and deaths has been attributed to various factors including, weak disease surveillance, low health-seeking behaviour of flu like symptoms, and stigma of Covid-19. There is evidence that SARS-CoV-2 spread mimics transmission patterns of other countries across the world. Since the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way research can be conducted and in light of restrictions on travel and risks to in-person data collection, innovative approaches to collecting data must be considered. Nearly 50% of Africa’s population is a unique mobile subscriber and it is one of the fastest growing smart-phone marketplaces in the world; hence, mobile phone platforms should be considered to monitor Covid-19 trends in the community. OBJECTIVE We demonstrate the use of digital contributor platforms to survey individuals about cases of flu-like symptoms and instances of unexplained deaths in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. METHODS Rapid cross-sectional survey of individuals with severe flu and pneumonia symptoms and unexplained deaths in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia and Zimbabwe RESULTS Using a non-health specific information platform, we found COVID-19 signals in five African countries, specifically: •Across countries, nearly half of the respondents (n=739) knew someone who had severe flu or pneumonia symptoms in recent months. •One in three respondents from Somalia and one in five from Zimbabwe respondents said they knew more than five people recently displaying flu and/or pneumonia symptoms. •In Somalia there were signals that a large number of people might be dying outside of health facilities, specifically in their homes or in IDP or refugee camps. CONCLUSIONS Existing digital contributor platforms with local networks are a non-traditional data source that can provide information from the community to supplement traditional government surveillance systems and academic surveys. We demonstrate that using these distributor networks to for community surveys can provide periodic information on rumours but could also be used to capture local sentiment to inform public health decision-making; for example, these insights could be useful to inform strategies to increase confidence in Covid19 vaccine. As Covid-19 continues to spread somewhat silently across sub-Saharan Africa, regional and national public health entities should consider expanding event-based surveillance sources to include these systems.

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