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Private Health Care Provision in Developing Countries: A Preliminary Analysis of Levels and Composition

Although the World Health Organization publishes annual figures on physicians, nurses, paramedics, hospitals, and beds for most countries of the world, there are no international figures for the public and private components of this supply. Standard definitions are lacking. There has been little or no analysis of how public policy and social and economic development affect the development of the health sector as a whole, or conversely, how the development of the less-planned and less-regulated private health care sector affects national health care systems or indeed health. This paper provides some initial data and analysis to open up this new area of enquiry. Although we are constrained by the lack of systematically collected, internationally comparable data on private provision from developing countries, with a bit of searching it has proved possible to pull together a modest data set of some international scope. It is our hope that some of the interesting findings from this "preliminary" effort will stimulate further enquiry. And it is our contention that the development of the private health care sector will prove to be an important factor in health care system performance in terms of cost, equity, and health impact.