Asian Pacific Journal of Health Sciences

Yazarlar: Yemi Adewoyin

Konular:-

DOI:10.21276/apjhs.2017.4.4.38

Anahtar Kelimeler:Health expenditure,Malaria prevalence,Neoliberalism,Public health

Özet: Neoliberal policies have been critiqued severally for their impacts on the economic development of countries that have adopted them. Not much is known about how these policies influence government spending on public health and the resultant effects on disease prevalence. This study thereforeanalyzes the pattern of government spending on healthcare in Nigeria to with a view to determining if it reflects the dictates of neoliberalism and if the prevalence pattern of diseases (using malaria as a case study) in the country has a relationship with, and can be explained with the spending pattern. Data on annual budgetary allocations to healthcare and clinically-diagnosed cases of malaria between 1985, when neoliberal policies were adopted in the country, and 2014 were reviewed and analyzed for trend using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation technique and employed as input data for a Regression analysis to determine the proportion of variance in malaria prevalence explained by the health expenditure. Health expenditure, with the recurrent component accounting for about 70% of the allocation, was an average of 3% of total budget in contrast to the 30% spent annually on administration. The funding pattern explained 12% of the variations in the prevalence of malaria in the study area (R2 = 0.118) with capital expenditure on health being the more significant contributor. Allocation to health is very poor as dictated by the policy, yet increasing it, especially for capital projects, is crucial for controlling disease prevalence and for overall social development.

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