Reallocating government spending on health

Description

Reallocating government spending on health involves redirecting public funds to prioritize essential health services, improve resource efficiency, and address critical gaps in healthcare delivery. This strategy targets underfunded areas, such as primary care, disease prevention, and underserved populations, while reducing expenditure on less effective or wasteful programs. The practical intent is to maximize health outcomes, ensure equitable access, and optimize the impact of limited resources to remedy disparities and inefficiencies in national health systems.

Context

In the developing countries as a whole, per capita government expenditure on health increased 3.2% in real terms between 1980 and 1985. This modest rise in average expenditure obscures the fact that in sub-Saharan Africa, the Mediterranean and the western hemisphere, per capita expenditure on health actually fell. The fall varied from 4.1% in sub-Saharan Africa to 5.5% in the western hemisphere and 22.8% in the two Mediterranean countries of Yugoslavia and Malta.