In February 2021, Niger organized the national virtual workshop to validate the results of its twelfth health accounts report dedicated to fiscal year 2019. The main results from the health accounts are summarized below:
– National healthcare spending has risen over the last three years, estimated at 469.029 billion FCFA in 2019, compared with 420.417 billion in 2018 and 381.532 in 2017 respectively. It represented 6.16% of gross domestic product;
– Healthcare expenditure is largely borne by households, with 46.09% of total expenditure in 2019. Although falling between 2016 and 2019, it remains high in a context where almost half the population lives on less than two dollars a day and despite the implementation of the free healthcare policy for more than a decade;
– National healthcare spending dominated by curative hospital care: hospitals and outpatient centers accounted for 24.48% of current healthcare spending in 2019. Hospitals accounted for an estimated 27.45% of this curative care expenditure, while ambulatory care providers accounted for 7.07%. This reflects the low priority given to spending on preventive health care, including health determinants, whose share had been estimated at around 12%.
The Niger health accounts report is attached.
