Private donors take lead in global health funding
Private donors constitute 30 per cent of global health funding, US study reveals
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Friday, 19, Jun 2009 08:52
National governments and international agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank are being overtaken by private donors as the major channels of global health funding, it has been revealed.
According to research published in the Lancet, private donors now constitute 30 per cent of assistance.
Dr Nirmala Ravishankar and Professor Christopher Murray from the Seattle-based University of Washington said one out of every ten dollars paid towards health funding from private donors came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
But despite the rise in global health funding - up to $21.8 billion in 2007 from $5.6 billion 17 years earlier - they warn that the poorest nations are still missing out.
Their report analysed funding from aid agencies in 22 developed countries, multilateral institutions like the World Health Organisation and hundreds of not-for-profit groups and charities.
Prior to this report, most private philanthropic donations for health were unaccounted for; meaning that nearly a third of all health aid was not tracked.
Overall, poor countries receive more money than countries with more resources, but there are strong anomalies. Sub-Saharan Africa receives the highest concentration of funding, but some African countries receive less aid than South American countries with lower disease burdens - like Peru and Argentina.
Of the 30 low- and middle-income countries with the most illness and premature death, 12 are missing from the list of countries that receive the most health aid, including Angola, Ukraine and Thailand. Mali and Colombia have about the same level of sickness, but Colombia receives three times as much health funding. The study also found that two of the world's emerging economic super powers, China and India receive huge amounts of health aid.
Almost a quarter of development assistance went towards HIV/Aids treatments and programmes, the report says.
Tuberculosis and malaria received less than a third of that, even though the combined burden for those diseases is greater than that from HIV/Aids in developing countries and despite promises by G8 countries that those diseases would receive more funding.
Professor Murray explained: "With no one tracking this massive growth in spending, it's no wonder that some countries receive far more than their neighbours for no immediately apparent reason.
"We're hoping that this attempt to count money that has never been counted before in a careful and consistent way will lead to greater transparency and better use of health resources."