This brief outlines the role that social transfers have to play in providing an inclusive framework to reduce intergenerational and chronic poverty. The authors argue that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), in common with many development, policies and programmes, focus effort on children, young people and the ‘working-age’ poor. However, they fail to recognise and support the social, economic and caring needs and contributions of older people. The paper highlights HelpAge's call on the international community to invest in government-led social transfer schemes in order to accelerate progress to achieve the MDGs. HelpAge calls for multilateral and bilateral development agencies to commit to working in partnership with national governments and invest in the development or scaling up of long-term, sustainable social transfer schemes, disaggregated monitoring of aid budgets and national government budgets to track the impact of social transfers, and recognition by the United Nations’ MDG database of the need for age-disaggregated data to ensure the effective monitoring and evaluation of the MDGs for all age groups.
Resource allocation and health financing
While countries such as the USA, South Africa and China debate health reforms to improve access to care while rationalising costs, Canada’s health care system has emerged as a notable option. According to this article, in the United States (US), meaningful discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the Canadian system has been thwarted by ideological mudslinging on the part of large insurance companies seeking to preserve their ultra-profitable turf and backed by conservative political forces stirring up old fears of ‘socialised medicine’. These distractions have relegated the possibility of a ‘public option’ to the legislative dustbin, leaving tens of millions of people to face uninsurance, under-insurance, bankruptcy and unnecessary death and suffering, even after passage of the Obama health plan. While South Africa appears to experience similar legislative paralysis, there remains room for reasoned health reform debate to address issues of equity, access, and financing. This article contributes to the debate from a Canadian perspective by setting out the basic principles of Medicare (Canada’s health care system), reviewing its advantages and challenges, clarifying misunderstandings, and exploring its relevance to South Africa. It periodically refers to the US because of the similarities to the South African situation, including its health care system, which mirrors South Africa’s current position if left unchanged. The article concludes that, while Medicare is neither flawless nor a model worthy of wholesale imitation, an open discussion of Canada’s experience should be included in South Africa’s current policy and political efforts.
This paper analysed aid flows for maternal, newborn, and child health for 2007 and 2008 and updated previous estimates for 2003-2006 in the 68 priority countries in the Countdown to 2015 Initiative. The complete aid activities database of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for 2007 and 2008 was manually coded and analysed with methods that were previously developed to track overseas development assistance (ODA). The researchers analysed the degree to which external funders target their ODA to recipients with the greatest maternal and child health needs and examined trends over the six years. They found that, in 2007 and 2008, US$4.7 billion and $5.4 billion (constant 2008 US$), respectively, were disbursed in support of maternal, newborn, and child health activities in all developing countries, reflecting a 105% increase between 2003 and 2008, but no change relative to overall ODA for health, which also increased by 105%. Targeting of ODA to countries with high rates of maternal and child mortality improved over the 6-year period, although some of these countries persistently received far less ODA per head than did countries with much lower mortality rates and higher income levels. Funding from the GAVI Alliance and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria exceeded core funding from multilateral institutions, and bilateral funding also increased substantially between 2003 and 2008, especially from the United States and the United Kingdom. The paper welcomes increases in ODA to maternal, newborn, and child health during 2003-2008 and the improved targeting of ODA to countries with greater needs. Nonetheless, these increases do not reflect increased prioritisation relative to other health areas.
Campaigners for increased health financing have welcomed the commitment by African Union member states to direct more resources to health. But the needs of the continent seem to dwarf available budgets. During the 15th Summit of the African Union heads of state in Kampala in July, African leaders committed to mobilise more resources for the health sector in addition to the allocation of 15 percent of national budgets. However, national resources are considered insufficient to meet the demand. Dr Thomas Kibua, director of health policy and systems research at the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), says even if every African states were to increase allocation to the health sector to 15%, none of the three health-related millennium development goals will be achieved. States would have to increase allocation to health care to 45%, he argued, which is untenable for any country.
Despite the strengths of microfinance, this article argues that it has thus far been largely inaccessible to the absolute poorest communities. The poorest communities continue to depend on public spending and external funding, unable to benefit from microcredit or microsavings because of an absolute lack of capital. Microfinance may alleviate some financial burden on the public sector by providing coverage for some of these people, but its ability to provide for extremely poor people remains to be seen. The article calls on international organisations such as the World Health Organization and the World Bank to continue to make microfinance for health a consideration in technical advice given to governments on health-care financing and social protection. They should also fund systematic, evaluative research so that science can back up what seems to be a logical and useful approach to health-care financing for the poor, particularly as it emphasises prevention and health promotion. The large-scale delivery of these tools will depend on repeated local adoption that must grow from communication of demonstrated success and advice on implementation of effective models. The article concludes that we already have enough knowledge to recognise that microfinance is an important tool in protecting health and that what is required now is further action.
Southern African countries have some of the world's worst income distribution, but can often afford social transfers, which have proved an efficient means of reducing the number of poor, according to regional experts. They say that funds can always be found by governments that have the political will to generate and dedicate money to social transfer schemes. Social transfers cover the various forms of social assistance for low-income or no-income individuals and households, and can include child support grants, non-contributory pensions, school feeding schemes, and agricultural or other inputs. In South Africa, social transfers like old-age pensions, and the child support grants introduced in the early 1990s, have managed to improve the lot of at least 47% of people living on less than US$2 a day, according to this article. Six countries in Southern Africa - Botswana, Lesotho, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland - provide non-contributory social pensions modelled on European social welfare policies. Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia, among others, are experimenting with some cash transfer programmes.
The United States (US) President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has boosted its assistance to Uganda's AIDS programme with an emergency supply of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs worth more than US$5.5 million - enough to put an estimated 72,000 HIV-infected people on the treatment over the next two years. But it has also served notice that Uganda must find new sources of funding if its HIV programmes are to be sustainable. The drugs are expected to help bridge the gap in the availability of ARV drugs in Uganda and prevent stock-outs and are included as part of an increase in funding recently announced by PEPFAR, following appeals from Ugandan AIDS activists and health providers struggling to put patients on ARVs. Uganda is the biggest recipient of PEPFAR funds.
The Africa Public Health Alliance & 15% Plus Campaign has welcomed the laudable decisions by the July 2010 African Union Heads of State Summit on various health policies and budget commitments, especially the restatement of the 2001 Abuja commitment to allocate at least 15% of annual budgets to health. The Alliance has identified six key areas requiring improvement. 1. More investment is needed in immunisation, in social determinants of health, in integrated health services and population and social development as this is crucial to reducing child mortality and improving healthy life expectancy. 2. The absolute level of per capita investment in health is as important as percentage allocation and should be increased to above at least $38 per capita. 3. Integrated health, education and labour policies are crucial to resolving health workforce shortages – and meeting all health Millennium Development Goals. 4. Ensuring gender equity in health budgeting is crucial, especially regarding adolescent and youth health. 5. The capacity for production, purchase and distribution of pharmaceuticals, essential medicines and commodities must be improved to prevent stock outs. 6. There should be at least one well-staffed and properly equipped primary health care clinic per community.
At the close of the African Union (AU) Heads of State Summit, health experts and activists from across Africa expressed grave concern that leaders are not delivering on fundamental commitments to expand investments in maternal and child health and other life-saving health services, including treatment and prevention for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. Although the AU Summit asserted that universal access to quality healthcare is a human right, the advocates expressed disappointment at the overall outcome – particularly regarding mobilising additional resources needed to save lives and advance maternal and child health. For example, the Declaration on Maternal and Child Health has committed AU Members to ‘enhancing domestic resources’ but not to a concrete, time bound increase in domestic investment in health. Activists also challenged donor governments to keep their health funding promises, including the commitment to scale up investments in order to reach universal access to HIV treatment and prevention.
At the end of their meeting on 27 July 2010 in Kampala, Uganda, members of the African Union (AU) reaffirmed that they would strive to spend 15% of their national budgets on health, but health experts like Chikezie Anyanwu, Africa Advocacy Advisor to Save the Children, which works to promote children's rights, were unsure of how effectively the money would be spent. According to him, countries could spend more than 15% and still show no real reduction in the deaths of children younger than five, or among women during or after childbirth, as specified in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations. Rwanda, Liberia and Tanzania are the only three African countries devoting more than 15% of their national spending on health, said Anyanwu, citing a 2010 World Health Organization (WHO) report, based on data from 2007. But they have made insufficient progress in meeting MDGs 4 and 5, which aim to reduce maternal and child mortality. In South Africa, one of the most developed and richest countries in the continent, the infant mortality rate has escalated and the country will probably not achieve the MDG target by the deadline of 2015.