Health is one of the most important services provided by the government in every country of
the world. In both the developed and developing nations, a significant proportion of the
nation?s wealth is devoted to health. For example, the World Health Reports (2006) gave
Nigerian government?s expenditure on health as a percentage of the nation?s Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) for year 2001, 2002, and 2003 as 5.3 percent, 5 percent, and 4.7 percent
respectively. This is to show the fact that Nigerian government health care expenditures are
not only significant in absolute terms but also relative to the Gross Domestic Product.
Developing nations? expenditure on health, however, ought to be more substantial than that
of the developed nations. This is because in developing countries like Nigeria, with relatively
low level of mechanization and automation, health assumes additional dimension of
importance in terms of implications for economic activities. The Federal Ministry of Health
in Nigeria (1998) noted that the health of the people not only contributes to better quality of
life, it was also essential for sustained economic and social development of the country as a
whole. Hence, health is regarded as a critical resource in the process of economic
development.
Consequently, spending on health is not only consumption expenditure, but a productive
investment both at individual and national levels. On the enterprise scale, for example, a
healthy workforce reduce the cost of building slacks into the production schedules; enhance
investment in staff training and exploitation of the benefits of specialization (Nwaobi,
undated). At the national level, a healthy population is potentially a more productive
population. This reasoning justifies national resource deployment to health and the
increased campaign to use organized healthcare. It is assumed that increased access and use
of health services will improve the health status of the population