My recent wonky indulgence has been exploring the visualization tool of the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD), which produces stunning graphs that display a snapshot of our planet’s disease burden across 5-year intervals from 1990 to 2010. The global and regional results of the study were launched in December 2012 in a special issue of The Lancet, and there are several country-specific papers expected this year.
One of the many interesting sessions at the International AIDS Conference was on how PEPFAR and the Global Fund could collaborate more strategically to maximize impact. The motivation for this kind of collaboration isn’t news to anyone in global health: at a time of budget austerity and flat lining aid contributions, a great way to maximize impact is to harmonize, coordinate and pool donor resources.
As we posted recently, India had its first polio-free year, despite significantly lagging behind in other vaccinations. The economic losses of vaccine-preventable diseases (VPD) to developing countries are tremendous: investing in vaccines in low- and middle-income countries would save 6.4 million children until 2020 – an investment valued at $231 billion.
The United States budget for 2011; red area is global health aid (Source: xkcd)
This is a joint post with Amanda Glassman.
The verdict is out (sort of): the proposed total global health appropriation for FY2012 will be $8.3 billion; $600m less than 2011 appropriations, $38.3m higher than the enacted amount in 2011 and $1.5 billion less than requested funding. More than $5.5 billion of this funding is appropriated to HIV/AIDS; $1.05 billion of which are contributions to the Global Fund. A further $2.6 billion is appropriated for USAID to fulfill a portfolio of responsibilities from nutrition to HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. Some highlights:
At CGD we have taken a cue from our previous work in Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA), and have come up with a methodology for a evaluating the quality of health aid.
Although 75% of published evaluations on conditional cash transfer programs (CCT) are sourced from Latin America, newer CCT programs in Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malawi, Pakistan, Tanzania and Nigeria are beginning to document, analyze and report results. This week, the World Bank brought a distinguished group together to discuss new findings, evaluation approaches and policy implications (see agenda here). Here are some highlights:
While the developed world commits itself to austerity measures and slashes aid budgets across the board, emerging economies are increasingly using foreign aid and direct investment to increase their soft power and global clout. In two articles this week, The Economist reports that India plans to set up its own aid agency. Once the world’s biggest aid recipient, India now plans to give $11.3 billion in the next five to seven years. While most of this sum is expected to be in the form of foreign direct investment, it also covers capacity building and humanitarian assistance for the poorest countries.
