New Report Launched On How European Aid Can Save The Health MDGs, Europe

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 19 Jun 2008 - 6:00 PDT

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A new report from Action for Global Health (AfGH)* highlights concerns that Europe is not doing enough to ensure that health and development aid is delivered in ways that will support developing countries to achieve the health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. The report - Healthy Aid: Why Europe Must Deliver More Aid, Better Spent to Save the Health MDGs - looks at both the amount of aid allocated to health and at how this aid is delivered to assess its real impact on the health of people living in the developing world.

Key findings in the report include;

- A decline in European Union (EU) financing for general health**
- More donor rhetoric than action
- A lack of engagement with civil society
- A widening gap in addressing gender inequity.

The report is based on evidence from case studies conducted in six developing countries on how aid for health is delivered, and makes recommendations on how the UK Government and the European Commission can improve mechanisms to ensure progress in achieving global health goals, particularly maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria.

Whilst acknowledging that some progress has been made in improving donor coordination, the new report highlights continued concerns over donor fragmentation and action.

"AfGH welcomes the increased focus donors have made in the past year on achieving the health MDGs with the launch of a series of new initiatives aimed at improving the effective delivery of health aid. But we are concerned that these initiatives are resulting in increased fragmentation and competition amongst donors and are little more than rhetoric", says Elaine Ireland of the International Aids Alliance, a member of AfGH. "We are therefore calling on donors to set aside their domestic political interests and move from rhetoric to action and genuinely harmonise their aid and reduce the burden on recipient governments".

Recommendations in the new report reiterate the need for continued pressure on donor and developing country governments to improve the way they deliver their aid "This report makes an important contribution to assessing the challenges facing donor countries in delivering aid through effective mechanisms. It recognizes the balance to be stuck between greater coordination and over-complexity, and charts a way ahead, "says TB Alert's Chief Executive Mike Mandelbaum.

The Healthy Aid report also stresses the role of civil society in supporting the delivery of services, and in holding their governments to account for results. It highlights concerns that new mechanisms for delivering aid make it harder to track where the money goes, how long it takes to reach local communities and its impact in developing countries.

"Achieving the MDGs does not only come from more funding for health, it also requires better delivery of aid. Improved aid effectiveness needs to start with better coordination between governments but also requires a much greater involvement of civil society in developing countries, and especially of women, without whose full and equal participation the effectiveness of any health system is fatally compromised", says Bruno Oudmayer CEO of Interact Worldwide, a member of AfGH.

"It is of critical importance to make progress on all these fronts, and not just focus on one of them."

The experience of Zambia outlined in the report reinforces that harmonisation in practice seems to be a process between government and donor, with few opportunities for civil society engagement. "Finance to support the essential role civil society organisations play both in delivering services and holding governments to account for the way donor aid is spent are dwindling in many African countries", according to Christopher Chabu Kangale from Alliance Zambia. "This is a far cry from the notion of country ownership, envisioned by many working in the health sector."

Notes

* Action for Global Health is an advocacy network of 15 non-governmental organisations in Brussels, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. We are calling for Europe to take urgent action to allow developing countries to meet the health Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

** While overall ODA from EU Member States has declined, aid for health saw an increase of US$1.1 billion. However while overall aid for health has increased, EC aid for general health declined dramatically from US$613.98 in 2005 to US$469.54 in 2006.

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