Janet Dzator

Household cost of seeking malaria care. A retrospective study of two districts in Ghana

Although malaria or fever (as it is commonly referred to) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in Ghana, the cost of treating the disease in the country has not been well documented. Knowledge about the cost of treating malaria can affect the health care seeking behaviour of people and justify increased expenditure for malaria control. This study used data collected from 1289 households in two districts in Ghana to estimate the direct and indirect costs of malaria treatment. Malaria was ascertained not by parasitological tests but through symptoms described by the respondents using a recall period of one month. It was found that substantial amount of time was spent in seeking malaria care and taking care of the sick, which makes the indirect cost per case of fever represent 79% of the total cost of seeking treatment in the survey area. The results provide ample economic justification for malaria control. The average cost of treating an episode of the disease including direct costs and the opportunity costs of travel and waiting time amounted to

The behaviour towards malaria care -- a multinomial logit approach.

8.67 or 3.7 days of male output or 4.7 days of female output. When compared with the average five days loss of output for the patient due to malaria morbidity and caretaking, it can be concluded that the cost of controlling malaria is lower than lost earnings or the value of output.

The impact of FDI spillover effects on total factor productivity in the Chinese electronic industry: a panel data analysis

This paper attempts to estimate a disease specific demand function to study the determinants of utilisation of the services of a health care provider or a treatment regiment for malaria. The study adapts a multinomial logit framework to look at both facility characteristics and individual patient features on demand for malaria care in Ghana. The individual patient characteristics form a set of social indicators which can be used to discriminate or put into groups patients with respect to their choice of provider.The study confirms the popular use of self-medication as a first choice of action in treating malaria. The choice of malaria care providers is found to be influenced by facility price, travel time, waiting time for treatment, education, age, sex and quality of care measured in terms of drugs availability. We further find that as income increases, the odds are in favour of self-medication when people get malaria.The paper calls for the intensification of the minimum training given to chemical sellers and the expansion of the paramedical staff training to assist in health care delivery in Ghana. Provision of education would tend to increase utilisation of government health services and thereby improve the quality of life of the people.

Does contract farming improve productivity and income of farmers?: A review of theory and evidence

This paper empirically investigates the impact of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) on total factor productivity (TFP) growth in a developing country, China. Utilising an endogenous growth theoretic framework, we estimate a model using 1328 firm-level data and spanning the period 2003–2008. We find that the productivity gap constrains the impact of FDI on TFP, while foreign equity participation enhances technological transfer from foreign partners thus resulting in increased TFP in the Chinese electronic industry (CEI). Our findings demonstrate the need for greater investment in the human capital skill base, adopting flexible labour regulatory policies and encouraging investment in R&D as it enhances TFP in the CEI.

Gender equality in education and economic growth in selected Southern African countries

The share of agriculture in the gross domestic product of (GDP) in many countries has been declining. Yet agriculture still plays an important role in many developing country economies as the sector is a source of employment for an estimated 60 to 70 percent of the population in most developing countries. Most agricultural production in developing countries is associated with low productivity and poor income due to high dependence on subsistence farming with minimal technology as well as poor access to markets. Contract farming is believed to improve productivity and income because it facilitates coordination between farmers and other actors in terms of production, processing and marketing of agricultural products. The effect of contract farming on income and productivity has been a subject of increasing research but most of the available information is aggregated and there is lack of detail analysis on the mechanisms of the effects. We conducted a systematic literature review of contract farming studies using keyword search strategy Econlit, Scopus and Science Direct search engines. The keywords “contract”, “farming”, “contract farming” were used in combination with the words “income”, “productivity”, “quantitative”, “qualitative”, “agriculture”, “aquaculture”, “developing”, “developed” and “country”. Initially a selection criteria for the potential studies were defined and used by the authors separately to select and rank 20 studies by importance. In the second round, the authors were provided with their own rankings as well as with the results of the first round for others. A revision of ranking was requested. Based on this approach a shortlist of 23 studies emerged; 11 on the impact of contract farming on productivity and 12 were on the effects of contract farming on income of producers. We conduct an in depth analyses of the selected studies and present evidence on the effect of contract farming on farmer productivity and income. Almost all the selected studies analyzing the impact of contract farming on income argue that farmers’ on contract farming schemes experienced some increase in their income.

Health, emergency facilities and development: Locating facilities to serve people and development better

Poverty reduction remains a big challenge in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) region, and economic growth is seen as a key ingredient to reduce poverty rates. Therefore, the region has been making significant commitments to embrace a more inclusive growth approach through the creation of the SADC Gender Unit as well as the regional Protocol on Gender. The aim of these interventions is to promote sustainable economic growth and reduce poverty rates. However, the attempts at testing for a positive and significant contribution of gender equality in education on economic growth have generated mixed results. Furthermore, as the empirical evidence comes from various parts of the world, only very little attention has been devoted to the SADC region. This research aims to fill this gap in literature. Hence this study examines the impact of gender equality in education on economic growth on a panel data of five Southern African countries between 1970 and 2010. The number of panels was restricted by data availability and a set of regression equation have been carried out for the sample, using Stata software Version 12. In this analysis, gender equality in education is measured by the ratio of girls to boys in primary enrolment, and economic growth is measured by real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita at 2005 constant prices. To account for the possible endogeneity of the gender equality variable, the instrumental variable (IV) techniques are used. Gender equality in education is instrumented by religion as it tested to be a powerful instrument. The evidence presented in this analysis suggests that there is a positive and significant effect of gender equality in education on economic growth in the region at 1% and 10% significance levels. We have also tested the sensitivity of our results to changes in the model specification. The dependent variable was re-specified to per capita GDP at purchasing power parity as opposed to real GDP per capita. In addition a time-trend variable was added to the existing explanatory variable. Gender equality in education remains positive and significant at the 1% significance level. These results indicate that the effects of gender equality in education to be positive significant and robust to changes in specification. This result advocates some policy adjustment in education planning within the region to ensure the retention of girl students, as well as raising education quality, to stimulate economic growth. Reducing gender inequality in education will not only promote growth but also help to d advance other valuable development goals.

The p-Median Problem and Health Facilities: Cost Saving and Improvement in Healthcare Delivery Through Facility Location

ABSTRACT:Health is a major factor in development and it is central to the theory about human capital and endogenous growth. This is because health affects all other economic and development activities. The World Health Organization’s (2003) call for “Health for all” which argues that “everybody needs and is entitled to the highest possible standard of health” is a coherent and indispensable vision for global health and development. The importance of health for development is also highlighted in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) where three of the eight MDGs goals focused on health. So far global actions to promote health for development have focused heavily on primary health care and it is right to do so given the importance of the burden of diseases in low and middle income countries (LMICs). However, there is a missing link. Despite their importance, emergency facilities and emergency services have become the poorer cousins of the global health and development effort. We analyze the relationship between emergency facilities, health care delivery and development and develop a simple heuristic or mathematical algorithm for effective location of facilities for regional or diversified health care systems. We modified a greedy (myopic) algorithm of the p-median location problem by using a reduced matrix for the determination of facilities. We illustrate how additional facilities can be located using a 5-node weighted distance matrix. We locate two facilities using the Myopic algorithm and showed how the two facilities could serve all the customers (demands) at nodes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Our heuristic reduced the computational and time costs as well as performance of existing location problems as well as made location of additional facilities more user friendly in our view. We compare our new method with the original greedy algorithm using a 400 random problem. The results demonstrate the efficiency and superiority of our new method resulting in the reduction cost of locating a facility using our new algorithm by up to 64%.

Health and economic growth: are there gendered effects?: Evidence from selected southern Africa development community region

The importance of health to economic growth and development is an undisputed fact. Modern advancement in technology and healthcare has contributed to improved health and productivity, but there are many people who cannot access healthcare in a timely fashion. Factors affecting delays in accessing healthcare include inadequate supply, poor location, or lack of healthcare facilities all of which can be exacerbated by increasing healthcare costs and scarcity of resources. In this study, we develop a simple two-stage method based on the p-median problem to investigate the location and access to healthcare (emergency) facilities in urban areas. We compare the results of our new method with the results of similar existing methods using 26-node, 42-node, and 55-node data. We also show the efficiency of our method with exact methods using 150-node random data. Our method compares favorably with optimal and the existing methods.

Common mental disorders, economic growth and development: Economic consequences and measurement issues

Women’s economic participation has recently been at the centre of the debate on sustainable development. It is a widely held view that women have a strategic role in poverty reduction dynamics. The argument is that when women have equal access to education and full participation in business and economic decision-making, they are a significant driving force against poverty. Women economic empowerment increases earning power which in its turn raises household incomes while reducing fertility rates that triggers the population transition dynamics. This is eventually translated into well-being of children, reducing poverty of future generations. In fact currently World Bank Strategy to empower women among others includes the need to increase investment in women’s health. Recognising this issue, SADC region has developed a number of gender based health polices which are in line with regional and international commitments. As a result one of the key indicators of development in the region is now the state of women’s health. However overall health status has been an issue in SADC region, mostly due to HIV/AIDS infections and Tuberculosis. Globally SADC has the highest level of HIV prevalence and the most affected social group is women, between 15 and 24 years of age. Furthermore the review of literature indicates that much of what is known about the effects of health by gender in this region has been descriptive in nature. No previous study has empirically investigated the nature of these effects in this region. This chapter aims to fill this gap. This paper empirically investigates the link between improvements on health disaggregated by gender on productivity and hence economic growth in the SADC region between 1970 and 2010. Health improvement is measured by life expectancy and economic growth is measured by real GDP per capita at 2005 constant prices and data is taken from the WDI and PWT. Using Fixed Effect (FE) the findings presented in this analysis suggests that improvements in both female and male health can significantly improve economic growth in this region. However an increase in male health significantly raises economic growth greater than that of females. These effects are robust to changes in model specification. These findings may reflect women’s higher morbidity rates in the region compared to men in this region that might affect productivity. They also may reflect inequalities in accessing education or formal paid work that is required to trigger the population transition dynamics and eventually economic growth. These results imply the need of some policy adjustment in order to align all SADC gender policies particularly in education, employment and improvements in health in order to capitalize on the benefits of improvements on female health.

Sustaining development and poverty reduction: Promoting growth where it counts

ABSTRACT:A large number of studies have attempted to discern the causes of low productivity and slow growth in developing countries especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The effects of global economic integration, corruption, geography, financial aid and human capital indicators such as education have been widely explored. Despite the significant contribution of common mental disorders (CMDs) to poverty and to the burden of disease, mainstream growth analyses have not yet integrated the body of scholarship that identifies the linkages between CMDs and growth. There are potential benefits of prioritising CMDs in development strategies but there are several challenges. Among the greatest challenges is patchy mental health record. Poor data hinders the conceptualisation and the analyses of the effect of common mental disorders on economic growth and development. This paper explores the theoretical and empirical macro-growth effects of CMDs in sub-Saharan Africa. Preliminary theorizing and evidence suggest that improvement in CMDs is likely to be a stimulus to growth in SSA. We explore further the performance of a non-psychometric instrument known as the K-6 as a cost-effective instrument with which to measure community mental health in household surveys across populations that have various levels of infrastructure and literacy. The K-6 instrument which is a semi-structured questionnaire includes six non-specific psychometric items measuring negative affective states or psychological distress. We also collect socioeconomic data during the survey which enabled us to study the determinants of common mental health conditions among urban and rural households in Ghana. Urban and rural communities were analysed separately because they may demonstrate different determinants of CMDs. We report the outcome of the simple non-psychometric survey as well as the results from logistic regressions showing the factors that affect common mental disorders among the survey respondents. The results show that both urban and rural groups experienced diminished mental health during the food and fuel price hikes of 2008 and 2009, and from the global financial crises over the same period, compared with those who reported no mental distress. The coefficients from the logistic regression estimated by the maximum likelihood show spatial variations in mental health indicators by age, education, and per capita income. For this study, gender did not appear to be a good predictor of any of the specific psychological distress measures assessed.