For millions of the world's poorest people, ill health too often goes hand in hand with grinding poverty and blunted national aspirations.
In looking for solutions to the troubling state of global health, evidence from developing countries shows that weak health systems are a significant roadblock to improving the health of their citizens.
If we are serious about fighting poverty, then improving the perilous health of millions of the poorest people must be a top priority of the global development community. At this vital halfway point to the 2015 Millennium Development Goals, stronger health systems are key to meeting these transformational targets.
On Saturday, Japan will host key groups and figures from around the world at its Global Health Summit (jointly organized by the Health Policy Institute Japan and the World Bank) for urgent talks on global health.
At the top of the agenda will be how we can better help poor countries to strengthen health systems. We look to Japan, which will be the chair of Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) and host of the G-8 Summit this July at Toyako, Hokkaido, to amplify the importance of global cooperation, and how everyone has a role to play--from governments and development agencies to the private sector and civil society. As the avian flu and SARS have dramatically shown, infectious diseases are part of our world.
Investment in health care and sound health policies are also essential contributors to a nation's economic growth, and an essential component of sustainable development and poverty reduction.
In today's globalized world, poverty in one part of the world affects us all. The Global Health Summit, under Japanese leadership, will remind us why the state of health worldwide is everyone's business.
While there is more health financing available to countries than ever before--as much as $14 billion (1.5 trillion yen) last year--much of it is earmarked for fighting priority diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and some vaccine-preventable diseases. But more attention is needed for maternal and child health, for nutrition and for family planning priorities.
And much more attention and resources are needed to help countries strengthen their own health systems to deliver essential services at the right time. In practical terms, strengthening health systems means putting together the right logistics that get life-saving drugs and health workers to where they are needed most, to mothers and their newborns whether in remote mountain villages or in crowded city neighborhoods.
Many existing aid programs for health care fail because they focus on a limited set of inputs needed to treat a particular disease, but they do not take into account all the supporting functions that are needed to deliver services and drugs to the people who need them.
With an increase in financing for global health, countries are also asking for greater accountability in how these additional resources are being used. In response, the global aid community is taking a new approach to project design, which focuses on "results-based financing." This approach links aid directly to verifiable results.
In Rwanda, for example, the World Bank is supporting a results-based financing project that enables local municipalities to pay incentives to public, private and NGO health-care providers who deliver basic health services and conduct health promotion programs to change behavior and offer preventive services that can be delivered at home (for example, distribution of bed nets and teaching about handwashing, nutrition and the use of safe water systems).
A recent evaluation found the use of bed nets for children aged 5 or under has increased from 4 percent in 2004 to more than 70 percent in 2007. As a result, the number of cases of malaria has decreased dramatically, emptying pediatric wards.
Thus, results-based financing links project financing directly with the desirable results--in this case, appropriate use of bed nets has reduced malaria cases among children--rather than relying on specific inputs.
There is deep concern in the global community that the maternal and child survival Millennium Development Goals will not be achieved without significantly improved performance and coordination by all stakeholders at national and global levels. And we all have much to learn from each other's successes and failures. Many solutions can be found in countries like Thailand, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Rwanda and the Maldives, which have achieved breakthroughs in primary health care within limited resources.
There is much to be gained by sharing experiences in a South-South dialogue, among neighboring countries and across regions. The occasion of Japan's Global Health Summit this month gives us an opportunity to breathe new life into our joint efforts to help developing countries achieve their Millennium Development Goals and ensure good health for all people, which is a best way to ensure inclusive and sustainable development in this global community.
No comments:
Post a Comment