Understanding variations in health insurance coverage in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania: Evidence from demographic and health surveys

Hubert Amu, Kwamena Sekyi Dickson, Akwasi Kumi-Kyereme and Eugene Kofuor Maafo Darteh

PLOS ONE, 2018, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-14

Abstract: Background: Realisation of universal health coverage is not possible without health financing systems that ensure financial risk protection. To ensure this, some African countries have instituted health insurance schemes as venues for ensuring universal access to health care for their populace. In this paper, we examined variations in health insurance coverage in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania. Methods: We used data from demographic and health surveys of Ghana (2014), Kenya (2014), Nigeria (2013), and Tanzania (2015). Women aged 15–49 and men aged 15–59 years were included in the study. Our study population comprised 9,378 women and 4,371 men from Ghana, 14,656 women and 12,712 men from Kenya, 38,598 women and 17,185 men from Nigeria, and 10,123 women and 2,514 men from Tanzania. Bivariate and multivariate techniques were used to analyse the data. Results: Coverage was highest in Ghana (Females = 62.4%, Males = 49.1%) and lowest in Nigeria (Females = 1.1%, Males = 3.1%). Age, level of education, residence, wealth status, and occupation were the socio-economic factors influencing variations in health insurance coverage. Conclusions: There are variations in health insurance coverage in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania, with Ghana recording the highest coverage. Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria may not be able to achieve universal health coverage and meet the sustainable development goals on health by the year 2030 if the current fragmented public health insurance systems persist in those countries. Therefore, the various schemes of these countries should be harmonised to help maximise the size of their risk pools and increase the confidence of potential subscribers in the systems, which may encourage them to enrol.

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0201833 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 01833&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0201833

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0201833

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().