The Role of Corruption and Healthcare Expenditure in Healthcare Systems of the Persian Gulf Region

Background and Purpose: More than a third of the world’s population lack access to essential medicines, despite the presence of several international agreements that proclaim health as a human right. Corruption, in its many forms, such as bribery and embezzlement, causes several detrimental effects on the health sector and access to medicines including economic, health, and government image and trust issues. Global health corruption remains a serious, ongoing, and under-recognized threat to global health progress. This paper aim is examination how global corruption and health-care expenditure (HE) affect health statue in the Persian Gulf countries over 1980-2014 and what can be done to combat corruption in the health sector. Materials and Methods: This study is an experimental and applied research. To verify the consistency of the results of the model, this study used the appropriate panel data analysis methods such as feasible general least square method for the nine Persian Gulf countries over 1980-2014. I employ different panel data procedures to avoid estimation problems, namely, autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity. The used package id Stata version 14. Results: The level of gross domestic product per capita, the level of corruption in the country, per capita HE, the quality of air and water, population density levels have negative effect on region people’s life expectancy, but the index of environmental policy and the education, measured as years of education obtained, have positive effect on region people’s life expectancy over 1980-2014. Conclusion: The results indicate that corruption and HE have negative effect on the Persian Gulf region people‘s life expectancy.