Resource allocation and health financing

The first round of consultations for the World Bank’s review of its procurement policy has been completed. Clear areas of contention between external funders, developing countries, and their private sector have arisen in the process on issues of domestic preferences and the use of developing countries’ procurement systems. The Bank has to decide whether it stands on the side of development and developing countries, or whether it stands for market orthodoxy and “business as usual,” argues the author of this article. For the most part developing countries and their domestic private sector argued that managing multiple external funding procurement systems with already limited capacity could be overwhelming. If the Bank wishes to demonstrate its commitment to development, it should support the use of domestic preferences, and live up to its international commitments by using country procurement systems as the default option. Furthermore, it should support developing countries in building transparent end effective country procurement systems and not undermine the policy space that these countries need to implement their development strategies and industrial policies. Eurodad supports calls from civil society organisations to initiate an independent review assessing barriers and how to effectively support small and medium-sized businesses.

Will leaders act now to save lives and make health care free in poor countries? On 23 September 2009 leaders met at the United Nations General Assembly in New York for a high-level event on health. On the table was a proposal to support at least seven developing countries to fully implement free care for women and children or to expand free health services to all, including Malawi and Mozambique. Oxfam recommends that governments of these countries make high-level commitments to introduce free health care for women and children and/or fully implement and expand free health care for all, as well as increase government spending on health to at least 15% of the national budget. The authors argue that the same commitments are required from rich country donors and multilateral aid agencies to provide additional long-term and predictable funding necessary to successfully implement free health care in all seven countries, and to officially extend the offer of financial and technical support for free health care to all poor countries who wish to remove fees and to make this event a global turning point in the fight to make health care free for all.

This document, by the Zambian Ministry of Health and PHRplus, summarises how the National Health Accounts (NHA) system was used to assess both general health and HIV and AIDS-specific spending in Zambia in 2002. The document also reviews health care use and borrowing patterns for people living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA). Findings show that the private sector, including households, finance 15.3 per cent of HIV and AIDS spending, whereas the public sector finances 7.2 per cent. Findings also reveal that PLWHA spend 12 times more on health care than those who are not infected. Traditional healers were also found to play a major role as providers of health care for people living with HIV and AIDS.

The Zimbabwe Parliamentary Portfolio committee on Health says it will not entertain a flimsy allocation of funds to the health sector in the forthcoming 2018 budget presentation unless the 15% Abuja target is met. Zimbabwe is a signatory to the Abuja Declaration of 2001 in which African Union countries pledged to allocate at least 15 percent of their annual budgets to improving the health sector. Since then, the country is yet to meet the target. In the 2017 budget, the health sector only got 7 percent of total government spending. Non state organisations expect the treasury to meet the Abuja declaration which states that 15 percent of the National budget should be dedicated to health to show commitment to ensuring a healthy and productive nation. Presenting the 2017 national budget, the then Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced that $281,9 million will be channeled towards the sector inclusive of remuneration for the public health care personnel ($223 million), operations and maintenance ($29,6 million), as well as capital expenditure that has been pegged at $29,5 million. Binga North MP Prince Dubeko Sibanda sharing his experience in Uganda learnt that if a budget ignores the plight of the marginalized it doesn’t get Parliamentary approval to be passed. “One thing I took in Uganda, they have got a law which says unless the budget meets certain criteria or takes care of people that are generally marginalized that budget should not be passed. Its part and parcel of their law. Its never passed,” the parliamentarian said.