The role of private providers in treating child diarrhoea in Latin America

This file is part of IDEAS, which uses RePEc data

The role of private providers in treating child diarrhoea in Latin America

Author Info

Hugh R. Waters (Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA)
Laurel E. Hatt (Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA)
Robert E. Black (Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA)

Abstract

Diarrhoeal disease, a leading cause of child mortality, disproportionately affects children in low-income countries - where private and non-governmental providers are often an important source of health care. We use 10 Living Standards Measurement Surveys from Latin America to model the choice of care for child diarrhoea in the private sector compared to the public sector. A total of 36.8% of children in the combined data set saw a private provider rather than a public one when taken for treatment. Each additional quintile of household economic status is associated with an increase of 6.5 percentage points in the probability that a child with diarrhoea is taken to a private provider (p<0.001).

However, treatments provided in the private sector are manifestly of worse quality than in the public sector. A total of 33.0% of children visiting a public provider received Oral Rehydration Solution, compared to 13.7% of those visiting a private provider. Conversely, children treated by a private provider are more likely to receive drugs, most commonly unnecessary antibiotics. Ironically, when it comes to treatment for child diarrhoea, wealthier and better educated households in Latin America are paying for treatment in the private sector that is ineffective in comparison with treatments that are commonly and inexpensively available. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Download Info
To download:

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. Information about this may be contained in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

Publisher Info
Article provided by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. in its journal Health Economics.

Volume (Year): 17 (2008)
Issue (Month): 1 ()
Pages: 21-29
Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML, plain text, BibTeX, RIS (EndNote), ReDIF
Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:17:y:2008:i:1:p:21-29

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/5749

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Christopher F. Baum).

Related research
Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

Hugh R. Waters, 1999. "Measuring the impact of health insurance with a correction for selection bias-a case study of Ecuador," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(5), pages 473-483.

Full references

Statistics
Access and download statistics

Did you know? RePEc data is maintained by each archive holder on its own website. Nothing is held centrally.

This page was last updated on 2008-8-28.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut using RePEc data on a server sponsored by the Society for Economic Dynamics.