Finance

This post was originally published on the Huffington Post’s Social Entrepreneurship Blog.

For almost 10 years, I managed health programs in Africa, Asia, and South America that harnessed social marketing techniques to produce tangible benefits for poor consumers. Our programs made low-cost products such as condoms, contraceptives, and oral rehydration salts available at reduced, affordable prices. We worked mostly through the private sector and were proud of our bottom-line health impact. We didn’t think much about underlying health systems or how to improve them. And if we had, we probably would have dismissed health system strengthening as overly ambitious. Read more »

The availability of funding for global health may well decide to what extent the health workforce will be able to meet countries' health care needs. With current financial uncertainties, the questions on our minds are: Will a decrease in global aid force cuts in spending for human resources? Is the era of big funding for global health already over?
 
“No,” says Dr. Cristian Baeza, World Bank director for health, nutrition, and population. While this era may not be over yet, in a recent lecture, Dr. Baeza discussed changes that will exert pressure on the availability of global health financing. Read more »