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This report is submitted on April 30, 2013.
The study entitled “The impact of the AIDS pandemic on health services in Africa: Evidence from Demographic Health Surveys” written by Anne Case and Christina Paxson for the Research Program in Development Studies and Center for Health and Wellbeing of Princeton University in March 2009, is an example of the health studies that are analysed using statistical analyses.
- Authors
- Source
This article was sourced from the Princeton webpage. The link to the paper is http://www.princeton.edu/~accase/downloads/Case%20Paxson%20The%20impact%20of%20the%20AIDS%20pandemic%20March%206.pdf
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- Abstract
This study focused on the impact of the AIDs epidemic on health services provided in African countries. For data resources, the study used Demographic and Health Surveys that were extracted from each of the fourteen countries examined. Data included natal are (pre and ante), birth, immunization and others from the year 1988 to the year 2005.
- Introduction
The study rationalizes that the occurrence and spread of AIDS in sub-Saharan African countries have reduced the amount and quality of health care delivered to people in those countries. Policy makers believed otherwise, saying that the occurrence of AIDS did not have that large effect on the quality and delivery of healthcare. The purpose of the study was to validate these claims using data from these countries and analysed using appropriate statistical techniques.
- Methods
The section on methodology describes the statistical analyses conducted by the researchers. This included the use of regression analysis using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) approach. The OLS approach is a method that estimates unknown parameters or variables using a linear regression model. This method determines the effect of various variables on the parameter in question, by minimizing the sum of the squared distances of an observation in comparison with a predicted linear estimate. Simply put, it predicts the behaviour of the unknown parameter against a line that is drawn up to approximate the behaviour of known variables.
- Results
The study uses linear regression and shows that by using the erosion of the health care services as the unknown variable and the incidence of AIDS cases as a known variable, there is a negative correlation between that two in that as AIDs cases increases, the amount of health care for non-AIDS cases decreases, indicating that there is insufficient funding for healthcare and there is competition for resources between the two classes of health care service provided.
- Conclusion
Using statistical tools, the researchers concluded that as the incidence of AIDs increases, the amount of funding and the relative amount of services delivered to non-AIDs cases decreases.
- Reference
