Healthcare Financing in Rural Cameroon

Nathanael Ojong
Additional contact information
Nathanael Ojong: Department of Social Science, York University, Keele St, Toronto, ON 4700, Canada

Societies, 2019, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-12

Abstract: In the global South, low-income populations are faced with frequent health shocks. Formal mechanisms to protect them against these shocks are absent or limited. Thus, what are the mechanisms used by low-income rural populations to finance healthcare? This paper draws on a qualitative study to examine the healthcare financing mechanisms of low-income rural populations in Cameroon. The findings suggest that low-income populations use 13 mechanisms to finance healthcare. Depending on several factors, people may use more than one of these mechanisms. In addition, social factors shape people’s patterns of usage of these mechanisms. Patterns of usage of these mechanisms are embedded in the principle of reciprocity. The notion of reciprocity does seem to discourage people from enrolling in the limited voluntary health insurance programmes which exist in various communities. Newly insured people were more likely to drop out if they did not receive a payout.

Keywords: healthcare financing; rural health; micro health insurance; out-of-pocket payments; reciprocity; Cameroon (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/9/4/77/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/9/4/77/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:9:y:2019:i:4:p:77-:d:286012

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

More articles in Societies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().