Sunday, 28 July 2013

Health systems: What do we need? More money?


There is  saying: Money answereth all things. Even in health, many times the belief is that things will be better even in developing contexts "if only we had more money". Is that really true? Is all we need money? If that were the case, with the influx of donor aid following the formation of the millennium development goals, the health status and development of struggling countries like mine would have been resolved but that is not the case. The graph below is a comparison of spending and life expectancy(2000).
Countries that invest more in health generally have better health than those that don't however the good health could be due a cascade of other things such s good roads,fewer wars etc. Interestingly, there seem to be diminishing returns in health status regardless of increases expenditure beyond a certain point(above). Comparison between countries with similar economies (OECD) illustrates this further.

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