Health Expenditures, Services, and Outcomes in Africa: Basic Data and Cross-national Comparisons, 1990-1996, Volume 434

Front Cover
World Bank Publications, 1999 M01 1 - 55 pages
In the past 30 years, African countries have made remarkable improvements in health conditions and status. However, they still suffer from some of the worst health conditions in the world. This study sets out to make available national-level information on health expenditures, health service outputs, and health outcomes in a way that could assist health planning and policy development in Africa. It outlines broad patterns of health spending, service delivery, mortality, fertility and malnutrition in Africa in the early to mid 1990s. By also exploring gaps in information available and potential uses of health information, the paper intends to stimulate discussion on how better to monitor progress and use information for better health outcomes within and among different African countries. The data covered in the study include major macroeconomic indicators, such as real GDP, rate of GDP growth, inflation rate, and per capita official development assistance. Key social indicators are presented, including the level of education, and access to safe water and sanitation. The detailed data contained in the annex tables from which the analytic results are derived invite readers to make additional analyses of their own.
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 37 - ... members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), to promote economic development and welfare.
Page 36 - Gross domestic product (GDP) at purchaser prices is the sum of the gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products.
Page 37 - ... is the number of deaths of infants under one year of age per 1,000 live births in a given year.
Page 38 - The total fertility rate in a specific year is the number of children that would be born to each woman if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and give birth to children at each age in agreement with prevailing agespecific fertility rates.
Page 35 - Access to an improved water source refers to the percentage of the population with reasonable access to an adequate amount of water from an improved source, such as a household connection, public standpipe, borehole, protected well or spring, or rainwater collection.
Page 35 - In rural areas it implies that members of the household do not have to spend a disproportionate part of the day fetching water.
Page 36 - Adult illiteracy is defined here as the proportion of the population over the age of fifteen who cannot, with understanding, read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life.
Page 37 - Life expectancy at birth indicates the number of years a newborn infant would live if prevailing patterns of mortality at the time of its birth were to stay the same throughout its life.
Page 35 - Prevalence of child malnutrition is the percentage of children under five whose weight for age is less than minus two standard deviations from the median for the international reference population ages 0-59 months. The reference population, adopted by the World Health Organization in 1983, is based on children from the United States, who are assumed to be well nourished.
Page 36 - STOCKS are defined as the sum of public and publicly guaranteed long-term debt, private nonguaranteed long-term debt, the use of IMF credit, and short-term debt. The relation between total debt stock and its components is illustrated on page xxi.

Bibliographic information