Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The WHO has recently articulated a number of challenges faced by health systems due to unreliable access to energy services. Reliable energy availability at rural health facilities is understood to be an enabler of access to quality healthcare, owing to its potential impacts on medical services, health and safety, disease prevention and treatment, staff recruitment and retention, and administration and logistics. However, little is known empirically about the intersections of energy and healthcare, often due to the lack of availability of facility level data. In this study, we explore the linkages between energy and healthcare in three Francophone countries in the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa: Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Haiti and Senegal. All three countries have faced serious challenges to the provision of quality health services, including infrastructure problems and specifically unreliable access to electricity. We use recent Demographic Health Survey data from all three countries to present empirical evidence on the association between (a) the availability and reliability of electricity sources, and (b) availability of health services, equipment and medical personnel at different levels of the respective health systems. Preliminary analysis indicates that unavailability and unreliability of electricity is associated with lower availability of medical equipment and basic health services, especially among facilities at the primary care level in DRC and Haiti. Our findings highlight the opportunity for creating more dependable and sustainable health systems by integrating decentralized clean energy technologies into health infrastructure.