DEEP-POCKETED donors are inadvertently encouraging governments to slow their health spending in parts of the developing world.
Government spending on healthcare in developing countries between 1995 and 2006 doubled to $18 billion, with one-third of these increases coming from foreign governments and aid organisations.
Christopher Murray’s team at the University of Washington in Seattle collected a range of data on health spending and then created a model to describe the relationship between foreign aid and domestic health funding.
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Although domestic health spending increased overall, it fell as a proportion of total budgets. Murray’s team found that for every $1 of health aid developing countries received, they cut their own contribution by nearly 50 cents. Sub-Saharan African countries made the deepest cuts.
“For every $1 of aid, poorer countries cut their own health contribution by nearly 50 cents”
Meanwhile countries in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East tended to increase their own health spending along with increased aid (The Lancet, ).
