Every year, billions of dollars of environmental overseas development aid (ODA) flow from high income countries in the North to low income countries in the South. This book interrogates this flow of ODA by addressing a number of questions. Why do countries provide this ODA? What do they seek to achieve? How effective is the ODA provided? And does it always go to the places of greatest environmental need? These questions are addressed using a comprehensive dataset of ODA.
Resource allocation and health financing
Greening aid? Understanding the environmental impact of development assistance
Hicks RL, Parks BC, Roberts JT, Tierney MJ: Oxford University Press: 2008
Greenpeace Copenhagen outcome assessment
Greenpeace: 19 December 2009
This document outlines Greenpeace’s assessment of the decisions taken at the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change held in Denmark in December 2009. In this, Greenpeace calls for a financial mechanism for dealing with climate change that is transparent and inclusive. At Copenhagen, Governments agreed to establish a Copenhagen Climate Fund, which Greenpeace believes is one step to ensuring that investments take place where they are most needed, noting that developing country action on climate change must have technological and financial support from industrialised countries.
GROUP PREMIUMS IN MICRO HEALTH INSURANCE EXPERIENCES FROM TANZANIA
Kiwara AD: East African Journal of Public Health 4(1): 28-32, 2007
A comparative approach was adopted to study four groups of informal economy operators (cobblers, welders, carpenters, small scale market retailers) focusing on a method of prepayment which could help them access health care services. Two groups with a total of 714 operators were organized to prepay for health care services through a group premium, while the other two groups with a total of 702 operators prepaid through individual premium, each operator paying from his or her sources. Data collected showed that the four groups were similar in many respects. These similarities included levels of education, housing, and social services such as water supplies, health problems, family size and health seeking behaviour. At the end of a period of three years 76% of the members from the two groups who chose group premium payment were still members of the prepayment health scheme and were receiving health care. For the two groups which opted for individual premium payment only 15% of their members were still receiving health care services at the end of three years.
Guide to using round 7 of the Global Fund to Support Health Systems strengthening
Physicians Forum for Human Rights
This Guide was produced to assist members of Country Coordinating Mechanisms and other individuals and organizations involved in preparing proposals for Round 7 of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which launched March 1, 2007. While the primary purpose of this Guide is to serve as a technical guide in thinking about and developing proposals that include health system strengthening activities, we also hope that it can help motivate countries to use the Global Fund to support such activities.
Has aid for AIDS raised all health funding boats?
Shiffman J, Berlan D and Hafner T: Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes 52: S45–S48, November 2009
Global health analysts have debated whether donor prioritisation of HIV and AIDS control has lifted all boats, raising attention and funding levels for health issues aside from HIV and AIDS. This paper investigates this question, considering donor funding for four historically prominent health agendas: HIV and AIDS, health systems strengthening, population and reproductive health, and infectious disease control-over the decade 1998–2007. It employed funding data from the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which tracks donor aid. The data indicates that HIV and AIDS may have helped to increase funding for the control of other infectious diseases; however, there is no firm evidence that other health issues beyond the control of infectious diseases have benefited. Between 1998 and 2007, funding for HIV and AIDS control rose from just 5.5% to nearly half of all aid for health. Over the same period, funding for health systems strengthening declined from 62.3% to 23.9% of total health aid and that for population and reproductive health declined from 26.4% to 12.3%. Also, even as total aid for health tripled during this decade, aid for health systems strengthening largely stagnated. Overall, the data indicates little support for the contention that donor funding for HIV and AIDS has lifted all boats.
Has donor prioritisation of HIV displaced aid for other health issues?
Shiffman J: Health Policy and Planning 23(2):95-100, 2008
Advocates for many developing-world health and population issues have expressed concern that the high level of donor attention to HIV/AIDS is displacing funding for their own concerns. Even organizations dedicated to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment have raised this issue. However, the issue of donor displacement has not been evaluated empirically. This paper attempts to do so by considering donor funding for four historically prominent health agendas—HIV/AIDS, population, health sector development and infectious disease control—over the years 1992 to 2005. The paper employs funding data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Development Assistance Committee, supplemented by data from other sources. Several trends indicate possible displacement effects, including HIV/AIDS’ rapidly growing share of total health aid, a concurrent global stagnation in population aid, the priority HIV/AIDS control receives in US funding, and HIV/AIDS aid levels in several sub-Saharan African states that approximate or exceed the entirety of their national health budgets. On the other hand, aggregate donor funding for health and population quadrupled between 1992 and 2005, allowing for funding growth for some health issues even as HIV/AIDS acquired an increasingly prominent place in donor health agendas. Overall, the evidence indicates that displacement is likely occurring, but that aggregate increases in global health aid may have mitigated some of the crowding-out effects.
Have pro-poor health policies improved the targeting of spending and the effective delivery of health care in South Africa?
Burget R, Swanepoel C: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, October 2006
South Africa’s apartheid health system was grossly ineffective. Private and public health spending combined was among the highest in the world at 8.4% of GDP, yet inequalities in provision, poor efficiency of spending and other factors impacting on health status meant that the country was not among the top 60 in terms of health status indicators (Goudge, 1999). In an attempt to remove obstacles to access to health services, the government introduced free primary health care in 1996. The paper attempts to gauge the impact of these changes. The focus falls on changes in the incidence of South African public health spending.
Health aid governance in fragile states: The Global Fund experience
Bornemisza O, Bridge J, Olszak-Olszewski M, Sakvarelidze G and Lazarus JV: Global Health Governance IV(1), 2010
In this study, researchers analysed Global Fund grant data from 122 recipient countries as an initial exploration into how well these grants are performing in fragile states as compared to other countries. Since 2002, the Global Fund has invested nearly US$ 5 billion in 41 fragile states, and most grants have been assessed as performing well, the researchers found. Nonetheless, statistically significant differences in performance exist between fragile states and other countries, which were further pronounced in states with humanitarian crises. This indicates that further investigation of this issue is warranted: variations in performance may be unavoidable given the complexities of health governance in fragile states, but may also have implications for how the Global Fund and others provide aid. For example, faster aid disbursements might allow for a better response to rapidly changing contexts, and there may need to be more of a focus on building capacity and strengthening health governance in these countries.
Health Budget - 15 Percent Now!
Wangui J: Pambazuka News 288, 26 January 2007
Health campaigners and activists led by 2004 Nobel Laureate Prof Wangari Mathai have petitioned the African Union member states for failing to honour their 15 per cent pledge of their annual budgets on health care. This fact became public knowledge as the World Social Forum (WSF) entered the third day. The petition comes ahead of the forthcoming AU Heads of State and Government summit in Addis Ababa. The petition by South African Nobel Laureate Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, but signed on his behalf by Prof Mathai calls for Africa leaders to act fast and implement their pledges in a bid to reverse the ugly trends of treatable diseases in Africa.
Health budget should meet Abuja Declaration
The Daily Mirror Reporter (Zimbabwe), 20 September 2006
In a presentation before the parliamentary portfolio committee on health and child welfare yesterday, the health ministry said its budgetary allocation for next year should conform to the declaration. This article presents its argument that in Zimbabwe, the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare budget should at least meet the Abuja Declaration target of a minimum of 15% of the government budget going to Ministry of Health.
Further details: /newsletter/id/31771