Innovative financing and global health

Feb 28th, 2011 4:11 PM UTC
By Brooke Riley

The UN Foundation, in partnership with the World Bank, the Brookings Institution, the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) and the Standard Bank recently hosted a panel on the role of innovative financing and the global health funding gap.

Innovative financing plays a critical role in promoting efficiencies in investments and addressing funding gaps for foreign assistance, which is more important than ever given the challenging fiscal climate. Keynote speaker Amie Batson, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Global Health at USAID, said “innovative finance, alongside advances in research, clinical practice and social marketing, is crucial in our efforts to reach ambitious global health goals in a resource-constrained environment.”

At the event, the UN Foundation unveiled the Pledge Guarantee for Health (PGH), a new financial tool to help expedite the disbursement of foreign assistance while making global health supplies more affordable for developing countries. PGH provides short-term loans to developing country recipients on the basis of pending aid commitments, which in turn helps countries avoid high costs that can arise while they are waiting for funding to replenish supplies of life-saving medications. Through the first PGH-facilitated deal, more than 800,000 anti-malaria bed nets were delivered and distributed in Zambia three months ahead of schedule and before the deadly rainy season. Throughout the year, we look forward to tracking the progress of this new financing mechanism and the life-saving impact it will have.

After the event, I had the opportunity to speak with Joy Phumaphi, executive secretary of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance, about global health challenges and existing financing mechanisms to address these problems such as the Global Fund and GAVI. Joy shared with me her support for the Global Fund and GAVI and encouraged ONE members to continue fighting on behalf of the world’s poor.

Here’s what she said:

“The Global Fund is the biggest single donor of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria in the developing world. And it is not just the biggest funder but it is also a development tool that has created ownership of the fight against malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS. That mechanism has effectively brought together stakeholders in a way that no other mechanism has ever been able to do in global development. This is a huge contribution to development… the contribution the Global Fund has made to global health is comparable to none…. Investments are more critical now than ever because it is not only a question of losing potential gains in the future but it is a question of losing the investments that we’ve made and we can’t afford to do that.”

TAGS: Development Assistance, Global Health, ONE, USAID