Market share of faith-inspired and private secular health care providers in Africa: comparing DHS and multi-purpose integrated surveys

Much of the evidence used to-date to back up statements about the market share of faith-inspired providers of health care in sub-Saharan Africa comes from data on health care facilities, and especially on the share of hospital beds held by Christian Health Associations in the countries where these associations operate. In those countries, estimates of the market share of faith-inspired health care providers based on hospital beds or similar measures are the 30 percent to 50 percent range. On the other hand, the evidence available from multi-purpose integrated household surveys that ask households where they go for health care and that identify specifically faith-inspired providers in survey questionnaires tells a different story, with lower market shares for faith-inspired facilities. One could ask whether the evidence from these multi-purpose integrated household surveys is itself robust. The objective in this chapter is to assess whether this is the case. Specifically, the idea is to compare market share estimates obtained from different types household surveys, by considering not only multi-purpose integrated surveys, but also Demographic and Health Surveys for which country coverage is larger. The findings suggest that market share estimates for faith-inspired healthcare providers are of a similar order of magnitude in both Demographic and Health Surveys and multi-purpose integrated surveys.