Financing Incidence of Catastrophic Health Expenditures Across Geopolitical Region in Nigeria
Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: This study investigates effects of health financing incidence of catastrophic health expenditures across geopolitical region in Nigeria. The study which x-rayed health financing incidence of catastrophic health expenditures across geopolitical region provided a more robust regional analysis effect of health financing incidence using the Nigeria Health and Demographic Survey data 2018. The study employed the Hosmer and Lemeshow’s goodness of fit test, and the Link post estimation tests to ascertain the robustness of the results and to further demonstrate that health facility visited, body mass index, cigarettes consumption, marital status, un-spaced children, household size and wealth index have positive incidence when it comes to the implication of catastrophic health expenditure on poverty rate in the country with regions like north east, south-south, and south west having more of such effects among other region when compared to north central. The findings further demonstrated that households that sought health care out of pocket experienced catastrophic expenditure and others were impoverished by health care payments incidence which account for why catastrophic out of pocket health payments are disproportionally concentrated among the better-off households in Nigeria possibly due to poor utilization of healthcare service by poor households, free healthcare services and exemption mechanisms; and the by-pass of low quality public primary healthcare (PHC) facilities by better-off households; hence, need for government to deepen provision of comprehensive benefit package for the poor and vulnerable populations in order to improve access to healthcare services and health outcomes. A pro-poor policy reform with improved quality of care, availability of essential medicines and equitable distribution of health workers will improve coverage and utilization of healthcare services for the poor and most vulnerable households. The lack of financial risk protection in Nigeria’s health system is a major challenge that policy-makers have to urgently address towards achieving UHC.
Institutions: University of Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe University
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7218174781