Determinants of Demand for Household Health Care: The Case of Ethiopian Public and Private Health Care Facilities
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Date
2008-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This paper is intended to identify the factor that determine the medical treatment
seeking behavior at the time of illness and the demand for health care services by
employing a maximum likelihood estimation techniques. The study also employed both
descriptive and empirical analysis. It has shown that individual and household
preferences are influenced by demographic, economic and quality variables that
determine demand for health care services from different providers in utilizing DHS
data of 2005.
The results of the two-Iogit model employed in socio-demographic characteristics such
as sex of the patients, wealth and marital status of the households, which was sought
at time of illness significantly, affect the treatment. While, patient preferences of
household providers are influenced by the age of the patients and quality variables.
Furthermore wealth and quality are determinant of the demand of health care
provider, which implies that patients would prefer private instead of the public
faoilities for their illness. It is suggested that improving the number and quality of
professional health staff and upgrading the physical and technical capability of the
health facility will increase the efficiency for better health care services. This again
suggests the need of the interventions of government to design an appropriate policy
measures that would facilitate the expansion of health facilities that accompanied with
resources to provide quality heath care services at reasonable cost to the majority of
the population.
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Economics