Amanda Glassman, director of Global Health Policy at the Center for Global Development, was not ready to blame the two Washington-based institutions.
"The external world thinks that IMF and World Bank have much more influence that they actually do," she said.
According to Glassman, conflicts and bad governance were more responsible for the weakening of health spending in the sub-Sahara region, which fell from 6.9 percent of GDP in 2005 to 6.5 percent in 2012.