The 1995/1996 Household Income, Expenditure - (PDF, 101 mb ...

VIlLA Introduction
VIII.3
Access to medical care is a fundamental right. Yet the supply of
medical services is variable geographically and medical expenditures as a
group are inferior (see Table II.14) in Egypt. This makes such services good
candidates for attracting subsidies. There are vast disparities in medical care
quality and scale in the country. There exists simultaneously a scarcity of
clinics offering very basic medical care (prenatal, birth, and antenatal, for
example, with simple preventative medical practices) juxtaposed against
inappropriate, high-tech, capital-intensive hospitals that serve the few.
In development assistance circles, the goals of curbing population
growth and aiding child survival have traditionally taken precedence over
lowering the incidence of certain endemic and emerging diseases
(schistosomiasis, Hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS). Egypt is succeeding in lowering
both its birth and Ideath rates but infant and child mortality rates remain
unacceptably high. Women are marrying later - in many cases in deference
to the high cost of living together as a couple - yet are still having more
children than they consider ideal (El zanaty, et al., (1996), p. 37). Methods of
family planning are widely disseminated, well-known, and supported by both
husbands and wives, but the rate of contraceptives use is slowing, and
households point to unmet needs in family planning (EI zanaty, et. al., ibid., p.
xx). HIECS data show that 16.1% of households spent some money on
contraception in 1995/1996.
VIIl.B Some Temporal Comparisons
VIlLB.l Household Medical Expenditures by Item
Data coverage in the medical expenditures section remained unchanged
between the two HIECS periods, except for the addition of two variables in the
new HIECS (expenditures on traditional medicinal plants and contraceptives).
The first table, Table VIlLI, shows the number of non-zero cases for medical
expenditure items, the average expenditure (in nominal £E) and standard
deviation of the estimate, for both household surveys. Since these are
averages by item and not over the sample, the focus is on the cost of
individual medical expenditures. The row labeled "TOTAL" does, however,
represent household nominal annual average expenditures on all medical
categories.
In both surveys, some explanatory notes appeared on the questionnaires
themselves and were relevant when it came to interview probing to produce a
response. "Dentist fees" include extraction, filling, orthodonture, and
cleaning. The group "Government hospital, elective" has within it a number of
sub-categories: the cost of the medical personnel (specialist or resident,
1 In 1990, countrywide infant and child mortality rates were 61.5 and 84.8
per 1000 live births, but in Upper Egypt the rates were 105.8 and 146.7
(USAID (1996». Currently one in twelve children will die before he reaches
age five, 75% of these deaths before the first year. Even as infants survive
birth, the probability that they are undernourished is too high. El Zanaty, et.
al., (1996) have found that 30% of children under five years of age are short
for their age.