[health-vn] How can donors help build global public goods in health ?

[Vern Weitzel]

Subject: 	[EQ] How can donors help build global public goods in health ?
Date: 	Fri, 1 May 2009 09:30:19 -0400
From: 	Ruggiero, Mrs. Ana Lucia (WDC) <ruglucia at PAHO.ORG>
Reply-To: 	Equity, Health & Human Development <EQUIDAD at LISTSERV.PAHO.ORG>
To: 	EQUIDAD at LISTSERV.PAHO.ORG



*How can donors help build global public goods in health ?

*

* *

Monica Das Gupta, Development Research Group, The World Bank

Lawrence Gostin, O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law,
Georgetown University Law Center

*Policy Research working paper ;  WPS 4907 The World Bank, Development
Research Group*

*Human Development and Public Services Team, April 2009


Available online at:
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2009/04/20/000158349_20090420112159/Rendered/PDF/WPS4907.pdf 


“…..Aid to developing countries has largely neglected the
population-wide health services that are core to communicable disease
control in the developed world. These mostly non-clinical services
generate "pure public goods" by reducing everyone's exposure to disease
through measures such as implementing health and sanitary regulations.
They complement the clinical preventive and treatment services which are
the donors' main focus.

Their neglect is manifested, for example, in a lack of coherent public
health regulations in countries where donors have long been active,
facilitating the spread of diseases such as avian flu. These services
can be inexpensive, and dramatically reduce health inequalities. Sri
Lanka spends less than 0.2% of GDP on its well-designed population-wide
services, which contribute to the country's high levels of health equity
and life expectancy despite low GDP per head and civil war. Evidence
abounds on the negative externalities of weak population-wide health
services.


Global public health security cannot be assured without building strong
national population-wide health systems to reduce the potential for
communicable diseases to spread within and beyond their borders. Donors
need greater clarity about what constitutes a strong public health
system, and how to build them. The paper discusses gaps in donors'
approaches and first steps toward closing them…..”