GEG WP 2013/80 Health Financing in Ghana, South Africa and Nigeria

Full Title: Health Financing in Ghana, South Africa and Nigeria: Are They Meeting the Abuja Target?

Authors: Devi Sridhar and Rachael Burke

GEG Working Paper 2013/80

Abstract

This paper uses budgetary documents from African health and finance ministries to assess the extent to which African governments are meeting targets set at the Organisation for African Unity Summit, held in Abuja in 2001. Drawing on three case studies (Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa), the authors explore how public healthcare systems are organised; how countries allocate domestic and foreign resources; and whether governments are complying with the Abuja target of spending 15% of government income to achieve health-related Millennium Development Goals, goals for universal coverage of basic healthcare, health equity goals, and financial risk protection. Whilst recognising that this figure is not straightforward to calculate – due to substantial discrepancies in health spending data between national ministries of finance, the WHO, the World Bank and the OECD – the paper argues that South Africa largely meets the Abuja target, whereas Ghana and Nigeria fall short. The paper strongly recommends that the Abuja target may not be the most effective way to improve public health.

Author Bio

Devi Sridhar is a Senior Lecturer in Global Health Policy at the University of Edinburgh and a Senior Research Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. She currently leads the global governance workpackage of the EU FP7 project Go4Health (Setting health-related development goals beyond 2015) and is PI of the project 'Research Priorities to Reduce Global Child Mortality: Integrating Governance and Epidemiology'.

Rachael Burke is a doctor in training in the UK Academic Foundation Programme. In 2010 she completed as MSc in Global Health Science at Oxford University. She has previously worked with University of Cape Town, Medical Research Council Uganda and Oxford Department Public Health and Primary Care. She also has experience working in healthcare in India, Malawi, Uganda and Sierra Leone.