The Impact of the Quality of Health Care on Children's Nutrition and Survival in Ghana

Abstract

It is critical, especially during periods of budget restraint, to identify the beneficiaries of social sector investments and the extent to which these investments influence the development process. This paper analyzes the effect of quality and accessibility of health services and other public infrastructure on the health of children and adults in Ghana. The paper objectively uses measured anthropometric outcomes, which reflect the nutritional status of an individual, as health indicators. The paper focuses on child height (by age and sex) and weight (by height). The paper also analyze the determinants of the probability of child survival, a measure considered to be an alternative indicator of health status. The results presented here suggest an important role for public health policy in eliminating the rural-urban disparities in health status and particularly in improving the health status of rural children and reducing their mortality rates. Urban areas have not been able to precisely measure many of the effect of health infrastructure on child outcomes. This may reflect the difficulty in assigning a composite measure of infrastructure availability and quality given that numerous facilities are located in each urban area which are accessible to the whole area's population. However, in rural areas the findings suggest that increasing the provision of basic health services, such as adequate supplies of basic drugs, will yield high social returns in terms of improved child health and survival probabilities.