Effect of health development assistance on health status in sub-Saharan Africa

INTRODUCTION: Data on the effect of health aid on the health status in developing countries are inconclusive. Moreover, studies on this issue in sub-Saharan Africa are scarce. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the effect of health development aid in sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: Using panel data analytic method, as well as infant mortality rate as a proxy for health status, this study examines the effect of health aid on infant mortality rate in sub-Saharan Africa. The panel was constructed from data on 43 countries for the period 1990-2010. Fixed effect, random effect, and first difference generalized method of moments estimator were used for estimation. RESULTS: Health development aid has a statistically significant positive effect. A 1% increase of health development assistance per capita saves the lives of two infants per 1,000 live births (P=0.000) in the region. CONCLUSION: Contrary to health aid pessimists' view, this study observes the fact that health development assistance has strong favorable effect in improving health status in sub-Saharan Africa.