Domestic Health Investment and Tuberculosis Mortality Rates in Kenya.

Abstract

In Kenya, a huge investment on the National TB program has for decades been made by the international sources even though a larger proportion remains unfunded. However, recently there has been an increase in investment from domestic sources yet the larger proportion remained unfunded. Between the years 2014 and 2015 domestic health investment towards TB control remained constant and the government was able to fund only 23% of the National TB program budget in 2014. Regardless of these investment and international commitments, in the year 2013 alone, an approximated five hundred thousand women lost their dear lives due to TB related complications, where more than a third of them were diagnosed with HIV. In addition, there were eighty thousand deaths resulting from tuberculosis amongst HIV negative infants in the same year. This was however attributed to low political commitment and un-sustained financing to control the epidemic. Based on this, the main objective of this study was to examine and/or investigate the impact of domestic investment on TB mortality in Kenya. The study employed econometric modelling in estimation using time series data for the period 1984-2015 obtained from the various economic surveys. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) was used as an estimating technique upon testing and addressing various assumptions. Significance was tested at 5 percent and ten percent levels. The empirical results indicated that there is a negative but statistically insignificant effect of domestic investment on TB mortality in Kenya. In conclusion, a review of finance policy is not that necessary in order to control the death resulting from TB. The government through the Ministry of Health needs to evaluate the levels mortalities associated with TB could be tackled given that financing alone doesn’t significantly contribute to the effective reduction as established empirically. Based on this finding, the study suggests for a consideration of reviewing other factors that theoretically and empirically are associated to TB mortality.