PHM-Exch> Seven Challenges in International Development Assistance for Health and Ways Forward

[Claudio Schuftan]

 *Seven Challenges in International Development Assistance for Health and
Ways Forward

*

Devi Sridhar, Research Fellow in Politics at All Souls College and Director
of the Global Health Governance Project, Oxford.

*Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics – Volume 38 Issue 3, Fall 2010
            *

Available online PDF [11p.] at: http://bit.ly/di5nu6


This paper outlines seven challenges in development assistance for health,
which in the current financial context, have become even more important to
address. These include the following:
(1) the proliferation of initiatives, focusing on specific diseases or
issues, as well as
(2) the lack of attention given to reforming the existing focal health
institutions, the WHO and World Bank.
(3) The lack of accountability of donors and their influence on
priority-setting are part of the reason that there is “initiavitis,” and
resistance to creating a strong UN system. (4) Other than absolute quantity
of aid, three other challenges linked to donors relate to the quality of aid
financing particularly the pragmatic difficulties of financing horizontal
interventions,
(5) the marginal involvement of developing country governments as aid
recipients, and
(6) the heavy reliance on Northern-based organizations as managers of funds.
(7) The final challenge discussed focuses on two unintended consequences of
the recent linking of health and foreign policy for international
development assistance.

 The paper then provides three suggestions for ways forward:
- creating new mechanisms to hold donors to account,
- developing national plans and
- strengthening national leadership in health, and South-South
collaboration……”
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20101001/ac0bf097/attachment.html>