PHM-Exch> Support for Taskforce recommendations worth US$5.3 billion to save millions of women and children in developing countries

[Claudio Schuftan]

A series of new financing measures worth US$5.3 billion and aimed at saving
the lives of millions of women and children were announced by the Taskforce
at the UN General Assembly in New York on 23 September.
The Healthy Women, Healthy Children: Investing in Our Common Future event
was held in the Trusteeship Council Chamber at the UN and compered by Al
Jazeera TV presenter, Riz Khan. More than 600 delegates including
representatives from Governments, NGOs, faith groups and civil society heard
UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown tell international leaders that urgent
action was required to get the health Millennium Development Goals back on
track in advance of the 2015 target.
The event marked the culmination of a year’s work by the Taskforce on
Innovative International Financing for Health Systems, launched by Brown and
World Bank President Zoellick last year. The meeting also marked the launch
of a Global Consensus on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. Visit the PMNCH
website.
Attendees heard how developing countries were making progress in providing
better health services for women and children and viewed films from Ethiopia
and Tanzania featuring and presented by the event Ambassadors, super models,
Liya Kebede and Christy Turlington. View the video.
The innovative financing proposals announced will build on progress made
over the past ten years to improve the quality of health for millions of the
world’s poorest people, but which face the threat of being reversed in the
face of the global downturn.
 Recommendations:
•A US$1 billion expansion of the International Finance Facility for
Immunisation (IFFIm)
•A new mechanism to make voluntary contributions when buying airline
tickets, expected to raise up to US$3.2 billion cumulatively by 2015
•US$515 million for results-based funding for health.
•US$ 360 million worth of debt conversions – Global Fund's Debt2Health
Initiative
•Launch of a VAT tax credit pilot scheme called De-Tax, expected to raise up
to US$ 220 million a year in VAT resources
•The commitment to explore a second Advance Market Commitment for
life-saving vaccines
•New commitments from leaders of Nepal, Malawi, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra
Leone, to expand access to health services.
 This is expected to result in 10 million more women and children having
access to health services.



 Detail of Announcements
•Leaders announced an expansion of the International Finance Facility for
Immunisation (IFFIm), first launched in 2006. Australia, Norway and the UK
will join The Netherlands’ announcement earlier this year in making an
additional pledge of US$1 billion.

The expanded IFFIm will not only continue to support immunisation efforts
worldwide, but will also provide cash injections to strengthen health
systems; including supply chain management, training and development,
information systems and surveillance.
•In a further move towards exploiting new funding streams the Millennium
Foundation for Innovative Finance for Health is developing the first
large-scale private giving initiative through Voluntary Solidarity
Contributions on travel product purchases.

Leading representatives of the Global Travel and Tourism Industry announced
their commitment to the first Voluntary Solidarity Contribution on air
tickets, hotel bookings and other travel products. ‘MassiveGood’ will give
travellers the opportunity to make a $/€/£ 2 micro-contribution when they
make a travel booking.
The Voluntary Solidarity Contribution on travel products is expected to
raise up to a cumulative US$5.3 billion by 2015. (For more information see
www.millenniumfoundation.org.)
•Leaders also announced a further US$515 million for results-based financing
programme for health. This programme helps countries achieve national health
plan goals, especially child malnutrition and child and maternal mortality
by giving money based upon results. In this way, funding can be focused on
results that benefit the very poorest, maximising the benefits of aid.
•Leaders outlined support for a second Advance Market Commitment (AMC), a
radical, new results-based approach to funding research & development for
vaccines, and potentially other health products. AMCs incentivise
pharmaceutical companies to develop and manufacture the vaccines the
developing world most needs to save children’s lives.

 Country commitments to health as follows:
•Nepal – doubling access to free and safe deliveries for (over a million)
more pregnant women
•Burundi - providing (as opposed to promising) free health care to all
children under 5 and pregnant women (1.4 million children and 200,000
pregnant women)
•Malawi - extending free health services through government and church-run
hospitals to reach 860,000 more people, including 80,000 more free births
•Sierra Leone – launching a new health plan to bring free health care for
women and children
•Ghana – bringing free health care into reach for millions more by
abolishing annual premiums and shifting to a single, one-off lifetime
payment, with exemptions for pregnant women, children up to eighteen and the
elderly.
•Liberia – committing to make the suspension of user fees permanent and
providing free health care for all, with the help of adequate donor finance

 “We cannot let mothers and children die through lack of finance and through
the persistence of user fees. The US$5.3 billion raised by the Taskforce,
and the leadership of the countries mean that today is an historic step
towards the goal of universal health care in Asia and Africa.”
– UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown
 “Innovation can be the key to making significant progress on reaching the
MDGs, strengthening health systems, and improving millions of lives –
especially the lives of women and children. A good example is our
partnership with GAVI Alliance, the Global Fund, and the WHO to develop a
platform to coordinate and channel aid to health systems – including funds
from some of the innovative financing mechanisms identified today.”
– World Bank President, Robert Zoellick.

DOCUMENT CAN BE DOWNLOADED FROM THE WEBSITE.
 For more information please contact:
Colleen Harris, Communication Adviser to the Taskforce
Colleen at harrisprivate.com
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