Neoliberalism, public health, and malaria prevalence in Nigeria

Abstract

Neoliberal policies have been critiqued severally for their impacts on the economic development of countries that have adopted
them. Not much is known about how these policies influence government spending on public health and the resultant effects
on disease prevalence. This study thereforeanalyzes the pattern of government spending on healthcare in Nigeria to with a view
to determining if it reflects the dictates of neoliberalism and if the prevalence pattern of diseases (using malaria as a case study)
in the country has a relationship with, and can be explained with the spending pattern. Data on annual budgetary allocations to
healthcare and clinically-diagnosed cases of malaria between 1985, when neoliberal policies were adopted in the country, and 2014
were reviewed and analyzed for trend using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation technique and employed as input data for
a Regression analysis to determine the proportion of variance in malaria prevalence explained by the health expenditure. Health
expenditure, with the recurrent component accounting for about 70% of the allocation, was an average of 3% of total budget in
contrast to the 30% spent annually on administration. The funding pattern explained 12% of the variations in the prevalence of
malaria in the study area (R2
= 0.118) with capital expenditure on health being the more significant contributor. Allocation to health
is very poor as dictated by the policy, yet increasing it, especially for capital projects, is crucial for controlling disease prevalence
and for overall social development.