The Case for Health Investment in Developing Countries
The most affluent nations were crippled by the health crisis. The developing world faces a much graver threat. Covid-19 has had and will continue to have disastrous consequences on their fragile health systems. Hundreds of thousands have already lost their lives in the emerging world. It is amid this setting that health investment should be prioritised above all else in poor countries.
Before comparing health investments to those in other sectors, I shall first discuss the effect of health investment on economic growth. Of course, health and GDP growth are a symbiotic relationship, but the causal effects of health on economic growth cannot be ignored either. Improvements in public health should increase GDP by raising productivity, since people with fewer physical and mental ailments are more effective workers.
Investment can also reduce the resources diverted to the treatment of opportunistic illnesses that could have otherwise been prevented at comparatively little expense.
The case for health investment in developing countries in particular is that its beneficiaries tend to have more economically active years of life remaining, in contrast to the elderly-focused health spending in the developed world. This logic has been proven empirically. Increasing life expectancy from 50 to 70 years contributes…
