Innovative Financing for Health Systems

Published June 29, 2009 @ 10:54AM PT

The Taskforce on Innovative Financing for Health Systems was formed after the UN high-level meeting in September 2008. Its goal is to find new ways to support the health efforts needed to reach the Millennium Development Goals. The Taskforce met to finalize their report in March, and finally released it. The DFID blog has more information on the Taskforce. I am obviously a huge supporter of strengthening health systems, so I have been looking forward to reading this report.

It didn't disappoint me, although I wonder how feasible some of the options are. They break their analysis into two parts - more money for health, and more health for the money.

The innovative mechanisms fall under more money for health. Their list is:

1. Expand the mandatory solidarity levy on airline tickets and explore the technical viability of other solidarity levies on tobacco and currency transactions.

2. Expand the use of the International Financing Facility for Immunization and other approaches to ensure predictability.

3. Provide public catalytic funding for large-scale private giving initiatives such as voluntary solidarity contributions and a proposed "De-Tax".

4. Establish or expand existing funds for results-based "buy-down" funding.

5. Strengthen the capacity of governments to secure better performance and investment from private, faith-based, community, NGO and other non-state actors in the health sector.

These are some pretty dense stuff. Tomorrow I'll start unpacking what those recommendations actually mean.

Under more health for the money, they get into mobilizing what they call the non-state sector, technical assistance, and better efficiency. More like what we're used to seeing in these kinds of reports. I'll get to those in more detail tomorrow too.

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Author

Alanna Shaikh has spent the last ten years immersed in global health; she has worked for NGOs, companies, universities, and the US government on projects that ranged from preventing antibacterial resistance to improving maternal and child health.