More Health for the Money?

Published June 30, 2009 @ 11:05AM PT

The second half of the Final Taskforce Report on Innovative Financing for Health Systems focused on making health dollars go farther - getting more impact for the money. It focuses on strong leadership for the health system, and funding ways to pool and unify fragmented donor aid. Here are some key quotes:

In low-income countries, governance reform is best promoted through incremental, small-scale and flexible responses to domestically-driven reform agendas based on long-term visions for public administration and accountability arrangements rather than complex structural reforms.

A financial strategy needs to be part of the national health strategy, and external assistance and domestic financing should ideally be pooled together to spread risk, reduce volatility of income, and allow for predictable finance.

Out-of-pocket payment is the least desirable form of revenue raising.

The Taskforce recognizes the enormous potential of the private sector contribution to health in low-income countries. Areas that merit more exploration and testing include private sector involvement in supply-chain management for the public sector, private training schools, low-cost clinic chains for the low-income employed in urban areas, low-cost pharmacy chains and diagnostic labs.

A substantial proportion of international resources today is spent on technical assistance. It consisted of 42% of all development assistance for health in 2002-2006. Technical assistance represents an enormous opportunity for efficiency gains. The current inefficient approaches to supplying technical assistance should be replaced by strategies that promote long-term institutional capacity development and skills.

All external funds should support one national health strategy.

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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.