Define your own key
Key
| 1 | < 5% |
| 2 | 5%-9.9% |
| 3 | 10%-14.9% |
| 4 | > 15% |
| 5 | No data |
Government Expenditure on Health in Africa
What does it mean ?
This indicator shows the level of government health expenditure relative to other government expenditures in a country. Government expenditure on health includes recurrent and capital spending by the government to improve the health status of the population and health services through public budgets, external borrowing, grants/donations and social or compulsory health insurance funds.
Why does it matter ?
Universal health coverage cannot be achieved without sufficient funds being allocated to the financing of health systems. This indicator informs us of the priority a government gives to funding health expenditures compared to other public expenditures in a country. How much a government should allocate to health expenditure depends on different factors and contexts. In 2001, Heads of State in African Union countries pledged to allocate at least 15% of their total government expenditure to health.
How is it collected ?
The preferred source of data for this indicator is a National Health Account, which is an internationally agreed method for collecting information about all financial flows related to health in a country. Where a recent National Health Account is not available, the WHO's health financing team collects similar information using technical contacts in-country and publicly available documents.
World Health Statistics 2014. http://apps.who.int/nha/database
