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Healthcare expenditure and life expectancy in Cameroon

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Abstract

Background

Healthcare is a serious issue confronting governments and households and calling for repeated deliberations in international forums. Ensuring good health for all was the predominant call of the millennium development goals (MDGs), re-echoed again in the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The first objective of this study is to evaluate and compare the impact of public and private health spending on life expectancy, and the second objective is to examine the causal link among public health expenditure, private health expenditure and life expectancy in Cameroon.

Methods

We used annual time series data from 1980 to 2014. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was employed to evaluate the effect of public and private health expenditure on life expectancy while the Toda and Yamamoto causality test was used to examine the relationship among public health expenditure, private health expenditure and life expectancy in Cameroon.

Results

The result shows that private health expenditure has a positive and significant impact on life expectancy while public health expenditure has no significant impact on life expectancy in Cameroon. The results of the causality test show a bidirectional causality between private health expenditure and life expectancy and a unidirectional causality running from life expectancy to public health expenditure.

Conclusions

The findings of this study suggest that the Cameroonian government should continue to embark on its poverty reduction strategy elaborated in its Growth and Employment Strategy Paper (GESP) and in pursuing its vision of attaining the SDGs by 2030. In addition, establishing effective public-private partnerships in developing the health sector could go a long way to improve the health status of the population.

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Abbreviations

CEU:

Cameroon Economic Update

GESP:

Growth and Employment Strategy Paper

MDGs:

Millennium development goals

OOP:

Out of pocket

SDGs:

Sustainable development goals

YLD:

Years lived with disease

YLL:

Years of life lost

WHO:

World Health Organization

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all the reviewers for their comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of Dschang, P.O. Box 110, Dschang, Cameroon

    Guivis Zeufack Nkemgha & Honoré Oumbé Tékam

  2. Department of Economics, Higher Technical Teachers Training College of Bamenda, P.O. Box 39, Bambili, Bamenda, Cameroon

    Alim Belek

Authors
  1. Guivis Zeufack Nkemgha
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  2. Honoré Oumbé Tékam
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  3. Alim Belek
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Contributions

Guivis Zeufack Nkemgha and Alim Belek carried out the data analyses and drafted the manuscript. They substantially contributed to the data analyses and interpretation of the data and provided comments on all the work. Tékam Oumbé Honoré carried out the previous literature analysis of the study. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. We confirm that this manuscript describes original work and has neither been published elsewhere nor is under consideration by any other journal. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Guivis Zeufack Nkemgha.

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Nkemgha, G.Z., Tékam, H.O. & Belek, A. Healthcare expenditure and life expectancy in Cameroon. J Public Health (Berl.) 29, 683–691 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-019-01181-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-019-01181-2

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