Mapping human resources for eye health in 21 countries of sub-Saharan Africa: current progress towards VISION 2020

Table 6 Correlations between density of eye care practitioners and development characteristics

	Ophthalmologists			Cataract surgeons			Ophthalmic COs			Ophthalmic nurses			Optometrists			ML refractionists
	n	R	P-value	n	R	P-value	n	R	P-value	n	R	P-value	n	R	P-value	n	R	P-value
GDP	20	0.6226	0.0034 ^a	14	0.4637	0.0949	7	−0.2857	0.5345	18	0.4118	0.0895	12	0.5594	0.0586	16	0.2794	0.2946
GHE	18	0.4159	0.0861	12	−0.0699	0.8290	6	0.2571	0.6228	16	0.4147	0.1102	11	0.7364	0.0098 ^a	14	0.1033	0.7253
HDI	20	0.3263	0.1603	14	0.4286	0.1263	7	−0.1429	0.7599	18	0.3746	0.1256	12	0.4126	0.1826	16	0.5853	0.0172*
Population size	20	−0.1203	0.6134	14	−0.0198	0.9465	7	−0.2143	0.6445	18	−0.4799	0.0439 ^a	12	−0.1678	0.6021	16	−0.0706	0.7950
Geographic size	20	0.0421	0.8601	14	−0.0901	0.7593	7	−0.7857	0.0362 ^a	18	−0.4159	0.0861	12	0.3007	0.3423	16	−0.2676	0.3163

Table legend: countries with ≤ one practitioner in any cadre have been excluded from analyses. R = Spearman’s rho. P-values in bold indicate significance at the 10% level, ^aat 5%, tested using Spearman rank correlations. CO: clinical officer; GDP: gross domestic product; GHE: government health expenditure; HDI: human development index; ML: mid-level.

ISSN: 1478-4491