As public health financing faces mounting pressure from economic downturns, debt, and global crises, experts call for prioritising health in government budgets and leveraging innovative financial strategies to sustain health systems.
According to an article from Health Policy Watch, health financing is dwindling in many countries due to COVID-related economic challenges, debt repayments, and overlapping crises such as climate change and conflict. David Evans, a visiting professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute, highlighted the difficulty of increasing health budgets under such conditions, noting the political challenges of prioritizing health spending when overall government expenditure is shrinking.
Development assistance for health also faces challenges, with Erika Placella from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) calling for greater “complementarity” among global health initiatives. Placella emphasized the importance of coordinating efforts and utilizing existing funds to address pandemic preparedness, rather than creating new, fragmented initiatives.
Countries like Ethiopia, heavily reliant on overseas development assistance (ODA), are exploring innovative solutions such as establishing a government-donor health fund to address key health priorities, including health system strengthening and pandemic preparedness. Meanwhile, Kenyan health advocate Joyce Ng’ang’a of WACI Health urged a focus on the social determinants of health, calling for a strengthened community-based health system to reduce the burden on formal healthcare facilities.
