To Pay or Not to Pay: Purchasing Prescribed Government Pharmaceuticals in Rural Mali. Small Applied Research Paper No. 14

摘要

In Mali, as in many African nations, individuals use health care resources (e.g. Islamic, traditional, or government1) simultaneously and sequentially for the same illness (Imperato 1977; Janzen 1978; Sussman 1988). Traditional and Islamic medical systems often incorporate cash, barter, and in-kind payment schemes (Ityavyar n.d.). In Mali, government medicine is the only system under which an individual must use cash for purchasing medications. This paper investigates under what circumstances people are willing to purchase these pharmaceutical. Using a social psychological framework, I examine individual purchasing behavior in rural Mali.