You wouldn’t be alone if you thought that understanding global health financing is a little outside of your comfort zone. But underneath all those figures, is a story of how governments, philanthropists and donors value lives. Who is worth the investment this year when they set their budgets?
You wouldn’t be alone if you thought that understanding global health financing is a little outside of your comfort zone.Understanding the data collected from a broad range of financial documents and reports, not all calculated in the same way, not all of the data collected at all. Well, it can be a bit daunting.But underneath all those figures, is a story of how governments, philanthropists and donors value lives. Who is worth the investment this year when they set their budgets?So, I took the time and effort to unpick the story from the latest report from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s on global health financing.The report is written by data and finance geeks from the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund and the World Bank. Luckily for us, these people have spent years getting to grips with the details of budgeting, annual reports and financial statements.The report presents information on trends in development assistance for health from all these sources, which tells us a positive story of relative financial stability during this time of austerity.Despite cuts in many developed countries, spending for low- and middle-income countries remained steady at $31.3 billion in 2013.It also tells us that sub-Saharan Africa was the greatest beneficiary and that the proportion given to maternal and newborn health has increased substantially by nearly 18% in just one year.The whole story?But, we know that this report does not tell the whole story.We know there are huge gaps in the data and that money allocated to maternal and newborn health does not always reach the frontline.We know that transparency is a big issue and that civil society is not either well enough equipped or invited to be part of the accountability process.We know that the Abuja target is far from being met in most settings and yet there is no clear African voice advocating across the continent for money to be allocated to maternal and newborn health.Step forward our very talented Evidence Advisor from Nigeria, Dr Aminu Magashi Garba who has identified this gap as one which needs to be urgently filled.Aminu has set up an Africa Health Budget Advocacy Network to plug this gap, launched at the recent Partners' Forum in Johannesburg. The Africa Health Budget Network is an online network which will:
- Generate, analyse and package existing evidence for use by journalists, civil society, advocates and anyone else who wants to know where the money is going
- Building capacity so that more people understand how budgets work and can help hold their governments and donors to account