Role of Donor Funding and Multi-national Corporations in Healthcare Financing in Africa: Case Study of Kenya (2000-2015)

Abstract

Healthcare financing in Africa is a major challenge due to the many problems ranging from poverty, corruption, misplaced priorities just to name but a few. Most of the African Countries are under developed but still try to improve health outcomes by steering towards achieving Universal Health Coverage in an effort to meet the sustainable health development goals. Donor funds and Multi-national corporations consist of international entities beyond national jurisdictions in terms of economic resources and decision-making responsibility in the Kenyan health sector. Despite their involvement the Kenyan health sector still suffers. This study generally evaluates the role of various donors and Multi-national Corporations financing the health sector in developing countries Kenya being one of them. Specifically the study aimed; to examine the contributions made by Multi-national Corporations in financing healthcare services in Kenya, the influence of Multinational Corporation financing healthcare services and to recommend ways of improving donor funding and it’s contribution to healthcare services. This study was underpinned by the Theory of Change and made use of descriptive research design. Both primary and secondary data was used in this study, with representation of the three Target groups; Users being healthcare personnel both in public and private sectors, MNCs and NGO’s. This study sampled top management in various MNCS, NGO’s, Government officials from the Ministry of Health and other donors within Kenya using stratified random sampling technique. Panel data was used to estimate a demand model for health care in the country. The data covers a 15 year period which is later analyzed in a five year phase. Phase one being 2000 when there was so much hype about the millennial bug, 2010 when Kenya welcomed its new constitution and the last phase analyzes the challenges that came with the new constitution. The massive involvement of for-profit hospital chains in the delivery of health services has created a considerable growth of the for profit sector. The benefits of health care financing by donor funds and MNCs and donors are in three different segments based on their expectations of health care financing: first being holistic, that is considering health care financing from aspects of financial success, company’s ethical behaviour and its societal impact as well as interaction with local communities. The second aspect is relational, which focuses primarily on financial success and impact on people and society as a whole. The third is financial where low interests in societal and ethical issues are in main emphasis on financial performance. In this case the stakeholder segments should be taken into consideration while evaluating health care financing influence on the stakeholder’s behaviour. The study recommends that MNCs and donor funding in health care must focus on the unique, basic needs of developing countries in a particular region or country, financing of health care must seek to adapt solutions from other markets and other applications to local needs. Financing of health care must examine local practices to identify useful principles and potential applications that will strike a balance between ensuring improved healthcare andthe Donors making their profit. MNCs also need to form new alliances, through public -private partnerships since no firm can create the commercial infrastructure that will sustain health care financing to the targeted vision alone. Finally, there’s need to strengthen our national insurance scheme as this will ensure that there’s a mechanism that allows every Kenyan to access healthcare services.