1 < 5%
2 5%-9.9%
3 10%-14.9%
4 > 15%
5 No data
1 0 to 5
2 5 to 10
3 10 to 20
4 20 to 30
5 30 to 40
6 40+
7 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

Stillbirths in 2015



World Health Organization. 2020. Stillbirths https://www.who.int/maternal_child_adolescent/epidemiology/stillbirth/en/ [Accessed 9 March 2020]