Systemic healthcare failure as a symptom of market failure in Sierra Leone

Emerson Jackson

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This article provides an examination of market failure, focusing on the health service system (HSS) in Sierra Leone. Market failure in the country’s HSS is a real concern, and has gone unchecked for decades by successive governments. In view of the prevailing conditions, it is noted that government failure is to be blamed for poor conditions experienced in the health sector. The issue of squeezed funding for management of the HSS must be revisited in order to address critical health concerns in the country. Most important to this is the continued rent-seeking that health professionals have thrived on as a free-riding venture, increasing their profit share, while (non-deliberately) depriving the poor and needy of affordable services in state-funded hospitals and healthcare centres. While rent-seeking has been on the rise, conditions of service have fallen behind those needed for health professionals to maintain a decent standard of living, hence the need for government to intervene to mitigate its continuing failure in the country’s HSS.

Keywords: Market Failure; Government Failure; Health Care; Sierra Leone (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H40 Q30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-09-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/96767/1/MPRA_paper_96767.pdf original version (application/pdf)

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:pra:mprapa:96767

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().