Title: Healthcare expenditure and life expectancy in Cameroon

Abstract

The advent of the covid19 pandemic has shown that no country was prepared to curb this type of health shock. Because all governments were overwhelmed by this situation. As of November 17, 2021, the Economist newspaper estimates the number of deaths from covid19 worldwide at around 17 million, the equivalent of the entire population of the Netherlands. Even if this pandemic is not yet behind us (with the appearance of the Omicron variant), it puts the issue of health financing at the end of the day. Because, if some patients with covid19 died on a ventilator, others did not have the chance to be taken care of. Following the Bamako Initiative in 1987, the government of Cameroon adopted a new health policy in 1992 based on the decentralization of healthcare delivery, emphasizing primary healthcare (which refers to essential healthcare based on scientifically sound and acceptable methods and technology, whose ultimate goal is to make better health accessible to all) and the participation of beneficiary communities in the co-financing and co-management of healthcare facilities. African leaders pledged to allocate at least 15% of their national budgets to health at the Abuja Conference in 2001, given its enormous contribution to socioeconomic wellbeing. Healthcare is a serious issue confronting governments and calling for repeated deliberations in international forums. Health, as measured by life expectancy, is one of the key components of the Human Development Index (HDI). Ensuring good health for all link among public health expenditure, private health expenditure and life expectancy in Cameroon. We used annual time series data from 1980 to 2014. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was employed to evaluate the effect of public and private health expenditure on life expectancy while the Toda and Yamamoto causality test was used to examine the relationship among public health expenditure, private health expenditure and life expectancy in Cameroon. The results show that private health expenditure has a positive and significant impact on life expectancy while public health expenditure has no significant impact on life expectancy in Cameroon. The results of the causality test show a bidirectional causality between private health expenditure and life expectancy and a unidirectional causality running from life expectancy to public health expenditure. The findings of this study suggest that the Cameroonian government should continue to embark on its National Development Strategy Paper (NDSP) and in pursuing its vision of attaining the SDGs by 2030. In addition, establishing effective public-private partnerships in developing the health sector could go a long way to improve the health status of the population.was the predominant call of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), re-echoed again in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Several health targets in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals follow the unfinished agenda of the Millennium Development Goals, which ended in 2015. Economics deals with the distribution of scarce resources which have competing uses. Thus, if a country is spending huge sums of money on healthcare, it is allocating itself a resource. It is making an investment whose outcome must be worthwhile. This outcome can somehow be measured in terms of prolonged life or years of life gained. The first objective of this study is to evaluate and compare the impact of public and private health spending on life expectancy, and the second objective is to examine the causal link among public health expenditure, private health expenditure and life expectancy in Cameroon. We used annual time series data from 1980 to 2014. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was employed to evaluate the effect of public and private health expenditure on life expectancy while the Toda and Yamamoto causality test was used to examine the relationship among public health expenditure, private health expenditure and life expectancy in Cameroon. The results show that private health expenditure has a positive and significant impact on life expectancy while public health expenditure has no significant impact on life expectancy in Cameroon. The results of the causality test show a bidirectional causality between private health expenditure and life expectancy and a unidirectional causality running from life expectancy to public health expenditure. The findings of this study suggest that the Cameroonian government should continue to embark on its National Development Strategy Paper (NDSP) and in pursuing its vision of attaining the SDGs by 2030. In addition, establishing effective public-private partnerships in developing the health sector could go a long way to improve the health status of the population.