Christian charity World Vision has welcomed the recent launch of the International Health Partnership by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, which aims to draw donors and country governments together to deliver better global healthcare.
7 countries – Burundi, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nepal and Zambia – will join the new International Health Partnership launched on 5 September in order to benefit from closer donor and international partner coordination.
At the launch Secretary of State for International Development, Douglas Alexander, said “The donor community needs to work together better and smarter in order to unburden the very countries we’re trying to help and better support poor countries’ own priorities.”
World Vision recognises this as a much-needed attempt to co-ordinate action on global health, in line with the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness. However, “co-ordination alone will not guarantee faster progress towards the Millennium Development Goals focused on health”, explains Kate Eardley, World Vision UK’s policy advisor on HIV and AIDS.
The actual amount donors spent on aid for health in 2007 was US$14 billion. This fell well short of the estimated US$27 billion for health needed in order to keep on track towards the MDGs, according to the Commission on Macro-economics and Health.
World Vision believes that the pledge of the International Health Partnership to “provide adequate resources” must now be expanded upon to detail country-specific funding pledges and implementation timetables.