Climate change and the burden of healthcare financing in African households.

Publisher: OpenJournals Pub Country of Publication: South Africa NLM ID: 101520860 Publication Model: Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 2071-2936 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 20712928 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Afr J Prim Health Care Fam Med Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: Tygervalley, South Africa : OpenJournals Pub.

Healthcare Financing* ; Climate Change*; Humans ; Delivery of Health Care ; Health Expenditures ; Income

Climate change is a mounting pressure on private health financing in Africa - directly because of increased disease prevalence and indirectly because of its negative impact on household income. The sources and consequences of the pressure constitute an important area of policy discourse, especially as it relates to issues of poverty and inequality. Relying on a panel dataset involving 49 African countries and the period 2000-2019, as well as a random effect regression analysis, this report shows that climate change has a positive and significant impact on the level of out-of-pocket health expenditure (OPHE) in Africa, and an increase in the level of greenhouse (CO2) emissions by 1% could bring about a 0.423% increase in the level of OPHE. Indirectly, the results show that, compared with the regional average, countries that have higher government health expenditure levels, above 1.7% regional average, and face higher climate change risk may likely record an increase in OPHE. Alternatively, countries with higher per capita income (above the regional annual average of $2300.00) are likely to record a drop in OPHE. Countries with lower climate change risk and a lower than the regional average age dependency (above the regional average of 80.4%) are also likely to record a drop in OPHE. It follows that there is a need for policy alignment, especially with regard to how climate change influences primary health care funding models in Africa.Contribution: The results of this research offer policymakers in-depth knowledge of how climate change erodes healthcare financing capacity of government and shifts the burden to households. This raises concerns on the quality of accessible healthcare and the link with poverty and inequality.

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Keywords: Africa.; climate change; household income; out-of-pocket health expenditure; primary health care

Date Created: 20230206 Date Completed: 20230207 Latest Revision: 20230208

20230208

PMC9900300

10.4102/phcfm.v15i1.3743

36744450