51. Rising concern, falling performance: Health-sector challenges evident before and after onset of COVID-19 pandemic
- Author:
- Carolyn Logan and Tosin Salau
- Publication Date:
- 07-2022
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Afrobarometer
- Abstract:
- As Africa and the world begin to regroup now that the worst ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic appear to be past, it is an opportune time to take stock of the state of health care systems on the continent. The pandemic is not over – South Africa is just coming out of its fifth wave of infection (Al Jazeera, 2022), and there may be more to come (Landman, Irfan, & Resnick, 2022). In the meantime, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (2022) and national governments continue to scale up their vaccination campaigns. But the war in Ukraine and global economic deterioration have finally supplanted COVID-19 at the top of the news cycle. In the early stages of the pandemic, many assessments warned of the possibly extreme vulnerability of Africans to the pandemic based in part on the many challenges already facing health care systems across much of the continent (Mattes, Logan, Gyimah-Boadi, & Ellison, 2020). While the direst predictions did not come to pass in most countries – South Africa being a notable exception – the pandemic has highlighted gaps in health systems amid the recognition that the next global health crisis could hit harder if improvements and preparations are not made. Taking a longer-term view, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also highlight the need to strengthen health systems (United Nations, 2018). SDG#3 focuses on good health and well-being. But Afrobarometer’s SDG Scorecards, based on our most recent data from 34 countries surveyed in Round 8 (2019/2021), show that from the perspective of citizens, only a handful of countries have been making significant progress toward achieving this SDG (Afrobarometer, 2021). Instead, a growing number of Africans report going without medical care, and the share who cite health as one of their country’s most important problems is also on the rise. Even among those who do get care, increasing proportions report finding it difficult, and having to pay bribes, to obtain the medical services they need. Not surprisingly, citizens are also increasingly critical of their governments’ performance in this sector: For the first time in two decades of Afrobarometer polling, a majority of respondents say their governments are performing badly on improving basic health services. Moreover, the evidence suggests that the challenges wrought by the pandemic were not the cause of these increasingly negative reviews: The downward trends were already under way before COVID-19 entered the picture, and in fact, in some cases the trends appear to be somewhat less negative since the onset of the pandemic.
- Topic:
- Health, Inequality, Pandemic, and COVID-19
- Political Geography:
- Africa