Official development assistance (ODA) for medical research and basic health sectors per capita, by recipient country

Published:January 2019

The Official Development Assistance (ODA) data are collected from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and are reported below for the year 2017 in US$ (not all countries have reported data on this indicator).

See also:

Official development assistance (ODA) for medical research and basic health sectors as a % of gross national income (GNI) and as a % of all ODA, by donor country
Benchmarking official development assistance (ODA) for medical research, by recipient and by donor country

What you see | Data sources | Current version

What you see

The data visualization compares 2017 health ODA per capita in US$ by recipient country (bottom chart). Data are provided by WHO region and country income groups (top charts).

Data were derived using two calculation methods for analysis – ‘weighted average’ and ‘median’. (To see the data using the two calculation methods, select the desired calculation method from the two options above the charts.)

Points to note:
  • The information on health ODA per capita are derived from 139 ODA recipient countries for which data are available. Due to the missing observations, caution is needed in interpreting the numbers.
  • As in 2016, the Africa region (top chart, left) and countries in the low-income group (top chart, right) received the highest weighted average health ODA per capita compared to the other regions and income groups. The different calculation methods do not make a substantial difference to this finding.
  • However, if using median values, the Western Pacific region at the last position in weighted averages, comes second. This difference is accounted for by the large variability in both the amount of ODA for health, and the population, in the countries of this region. For example, Nauru, the ‘top’ country in this region received 39.58 US$ per capita (0.4 million US$ in total) compared to 0.08 US$ per capita (2.5 million US$ in total) for Malaysia and compared to 0.10 US$ per capita (141 million US$ in total) for China. (Select the Western Pacific region in the top left chart and explore the information by country in the bottom chart by hovering over each bar).
  • There is also a noticeable difference between the weighted average (0.60 US$) and the median health ODA per capita (1.42 US$) for the South-East Asia region (top chart, left). This difference is mainly explained by India’s large population of more than 1 billion (total ODA for health 284.5 million US$; health ODA per capita 0.21 US$; hover over bar in bottom chart to see these figures).
  • Comparing the weighted average values and the median per income group shows that the weighted averages and the median are close for low-income groups (5.64 US$ and 5.68 US$ per capita respectively) and for high-income groups (0.10 US$ and 0.19 US$ per capita respectively). On the other hand, the weighted average is substantially lower than the median for both lower and upper middle-income countries (1.23 US$ vs 2.99 US$; and 0.33 US$ vs 0.92 US$).

To explore by country data (bottom chart) and differences with income group weighted averages or median (the income group weighted average or median is symbolized by vertical dashed line and countries are color-coded by region):

  • Select a WHO region (top chart, left) or an income group (top chart, right) to compare countries according to the category of interest. For example:
    -- Selecting only Africa shows in the bottom chart that Sao Tome and Principe (a lower middle-income country) received the highest amount of health ODA per capita (30.44 US$) compared to the other countries in this region; its ODA per capita is around six times higher than the weighted average or the median for this region (Africa: 4.83 US$ weighted average, 5.19 US$ median) and almost 25 times the weighted average for this income group (lower middle income: 1.23 US$) and 10 times the median (lower middle income: 2.99 US$).
    -- Selecting only the low-income group in the chart at the top right shows in the bottom chart that Gambia received four times more (23.75 US$) health ODA per capita than the weighted average for this income group (5.64 US$). The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, at the bottom of the list, received almost six times less with 0.98 US$.
  • Click on the drop-down icon next to “WHO Region” (top chart, left), “Income group” (top chart, right) and “Country” (bottom chart) to sort the values accordingly.
  • Hover the cursor on a bar in a graphic to see more information in a popup window.
  • Undo the selection by clicking ‘undo’ or ‘reset’ near the bottom of the page or by clicking the same element again.