Europe told to spend more money on health and spend it better
30 June 2008
According to a new report from Action for Global Health*, Europe needs to allocate more money for health and spend it better if it is to have a real impact on the health of people living in the developing world.
The report Healthy aid: why Europe must deliver more aid, better spent to save the health Millennium Development Goals looks at how European aid for health is being delivered in six developing countries. It finds a decline in European Union financing for general health, more donor rhetoric than action, a lack of engagement with civil society and a widening gap in addressing gender inequity.
To reach the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, Action for Global Health reiterates that donor and developing country governments must improve the way they deliver their aid.
“We are calling on donors to set aside their domestic political differences and move from rhetoric to action and genuinely harmonise their aid and reduce the burden on recipient governments,” said the Alliance’s Global Health Advocacy Officer, Elaine Ireland.
The report also highlights concerns that new mechanisms for delivering aid make it harder to track where the money goes, how long it takes to reach local communities and its impact on developing countries. It stresses the role of civil society in supporting the delivery of services and in holding their governments to account for results.
“Finance to support the essential role that civil society organisations play both in delivering services and in holding governments to account for the way that donor aid is spent is dwindling in many African countries,” according to Alliance Zambia’s Director, Christopher Chabu Kangale. “This is a far cry from the notion of country ownership envisioned by many working in the health sector.”
Action for Global Health launched Healthy aid on 18 June at the UN Residence Palace in Brussels, Belgium, where partners presented the report’s main recommendations and findings from the six country case studies to UN agencies, Brussels-based NGOs and Juan Garay from DG Development of the European Commission. The report was also launched in the UK on 18 June at the Houses of Parliament in London, where Gareth Thomas, Under-Secretary of State for Development gave a response from DFID to the report.
*Action for Global Health (of which the Alliance is a member) is a network of European NGOs and charities conducting advocacy work on the health Millennium Development Goals.