A new study has found that how donor funding is spent on global versus country-specific functions of.
The study led by The Lancet showed an expanded definition of official development assistance (ODA) for health, which is used to identify important underfunded areas and could reshape how governments provide financial support for global health issues.
The researchers tried to present a clear picture of donor support including financing reported as ODA for health with additional spending by countries on pharmaceutical research and development for neglected diseases that kill poor people.
The co-author of the study and professor of Economics at Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, who is also a former U.S. Treasury Secretary, said that the best way for donors to improve the health of poor people in middle-income countries was to invest in research and development for neglected diseases, pandemic preparedness, and other global functions of health.
Summers explained that these investments by donors would improve existing tools, lower drug prices, and increase global coordination to make it cheaper and more efficient for all countries to deliver health services to poor people.
Dr. Marco Schaferhoff, Associate Director of SEEK Development in Berlin, Germany, shared that countries globally should invest in essential global functions that benefit poor people wherever they live, including the poor within middle-income countries.
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The authors urge governments to adopt an approach to international health financing that more strongly emphasises funding for global health functions, as these promise great impact for all countries.
The study is published in the published in The Lancet demonstrates.