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The Determinants of Health Care Utilisation in Rural Senegal

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  • Aurélia Lépine
  • Alexis Le Nestour

Abstract

In the context of the national debate on the extension of health insurance to farming households in Senegal, information on 504 households and 18 public primary health care (PHC) facilities was collected to analyse health care utilisation in an area where people live on 1.17 USD per day and where only 6% have health insurance coverage. Despite the high level of poverty, 84% of the individuals sought treatment from a qualified health provider during their last illness. The high rate of utilisation in the area is found to be attributable to the characteristics of the PHC facilities. Indeed, PHC facilities are highly accessible and offer good medical services at a low price. The low price of medical services in the sample explains why the demand for curative care is found to be price-inelastic. This latter result suggests that policies that will reduce the price of medical services to increase the health care use are not likely to be effective. Copyright 2013 , Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Aurélia Lépine & Alexis Le Nestour, 2013. "The Determinants of Health Care Utilisation in Rural Senegal," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 22(1), pages 163-186, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:22:y:2013:i:1:p:163-186
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejs020
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    Cited by:

    1. Rossi, Pauline & Villar, Paola, 2020. "Private health investments under competing risks: Evidence from malaria control in Senegal," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    2. M. Boubacar Bathily & Omar Sene, 2021. "Décomposition des sources d'inégalité d'accès à la santé de l'enfant: Une analyse comparative de quelques pays d'Afrique Subsaharienne," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 33(2), pages 221-233, June.
    3. Laura Anselmi & Mylène Lagarde & Kara Hanson, 2015. "Health service availability and health seeking behaviour in resource poor settings: evidence from Mozambique," Health Economics Review, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-13, December.
    4. Lépine, A. & Lagarde, M. & Le Nestour, A., 2015. "Free primary care in Zambia: an impact evaluation using a pooled synthetic control method," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 15/20, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    5. Lépine, Aurélia & Strobl, Eric, 2013. "The Effect of Women’s Bargaining Power on Child Nutrition in Rural Senegal," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 17-30.
    6. David Fielding, 2013. "How Much Does Women's Empowerment Influence their Wellbeing? Evidence from Africa," Working Papers 1307, University of Otago, Department of Economics, revised Apr 2013.

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