Foreign Health Aid: Positive and Negative Impacts on Recipient Countries

FOREIGN HEALTH AID 1
Foreign Health Aid
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FOREIGN HEALTH AID 2
Foreign health aid
Foreign aid is where there is a transfer of resources such as goods, services, and capital
from their country or international organizations so that the country that receives it and its
population benefits. In short, its where rich countries, organizations or individuals give their help
in form of money, goods, and services to countries that are poor and require the help to carry out
their activities and benefit its citizens. It can also be referred to as economic aid, international aid
or development aid but it is quite different from military aid. The foreign aid is given to serve
various purposes in different sectors in the countries that receive them (Ekanayake and Chatrna
2010, pp. 1). These purposes include; access to proper healthcare and education, access to safe
water, improving infrastructure, access to finance, improving agriculture and agribusiness, help
in the governance and successful growth in development in the countries. When the foreign aid
provided is to be specifically used for the purposes of improving the health care system in the
recipient country it is referred to as health aid grants (Mavrotas 2010). When the foreign aid is
utilized it can have both positive and negative effects on the countries that receive them. The
donors usually give conditions and have different priorities when giving out the aid which at
times do not go hand in hand with the national policies in the recipient countries and it tends to
lead to the weakening of the country’s healthcare system but there are strategies which can be
put in place to prevent this from happening and there exists evidence that shows this happening.
The essay will cover all of these issues.
Kenya has a population of over 47 million people and it has the largest economy in the
East and Central African region. It dedicates 5.7% of its budget on healthcare which is quite little
in an area that requires more to serve its population. In terms of health issues, it has a variety of
issues; first it suffers from quite a high mother and infant mortality rates, there is a 1 in 20%

FOREIGN HEALTH AID 3
chance of an individual contracting AIDS, there is a 70% chance of individuals in the population
contracting malaria with the disease remaining a major cause or mortality in Kenya and also the
life expectancy is only at 64 years. In addition, every 10,000 individuals are served by only two
physicians and thus they are spread quite thinly in the country, therefore, have a hard time when
they want to address the HIV epidemic and also the widespread diseases across the nation.
Therefore with these issues in the health sector, Kenya require foreign aid to assist in the
improvement of the healthcare system. The country is a favorite to donor countries like America
and organizations like AMREF, USAID, and ADS because of its record of democracy and
transparency as compared to other developing nations. For instance, the US considers Kenya as
an important partner in the East African region (Juma et.al 2012)
There exists a variety of evidence that shows how foreign health aid has been
successfully utilized in Kenya. First, in 2014, the country received foreign aid and 5 million
dollars was dedicated to helping the Living Goods organization do their work. They have a
working model which is game-changing in that it helps Health Entrepreneurs to have the ability
to deliver life-saving health products to the doorstep of the poor in Kenya by empowering these
entrepreneurs. Even if the hospitals and services are improved, another issue that arises is the
fact that the poor have to travel long distances to access these healthcare services which can be
quite hard, therefore this organisation’s goal is to make it easy for these people and the
programme was successful and it is still ongoing in the country. These entrepreneurs go house to
house teaching families how what they have to do in order to improve their health as well as
wealth and also they offer life-changing products and services, for example, safe delivery kits,
good nutrition habits, family planning and treatments for diarrhea and malaria (Baldé 2011,
pp.250). Secondly, in the fight against HIV/AIDS 70% of the funds used is attributed to foreign