Global Health Financing Crisis: Dog-Eat-Dog or A Constructive Prioritization? [GUEST ESSAY]

Newsletter Edition #264 [The Files In-Depth]

Hi,

Time is of essence. Key institutions and actors are trying to cope with the irreversible changes in global health.

Even as the transition of the international order is underway, there is a need to simultaneously rebuild what comes next in this complex field of global health not insulated from such defining shifts.

Who should be involved and why?And how could key actors decisively shape this moment?

Today, we bring you a thought-provoking guest essay from global health observer Jon Lidén, that draws some broad strokes of the direction the remaking of global health could take.

Lidén has worked on global health financing matters for several years, and has also written about transitions in global health governance.

We hope you find this insightful.

Thank you for reading.

Watch out for our coverage of the final stretch of the pandemic treaty negotiations this week, as countries meet in Geneva in a bid to conclude these discussions within the scheduled time left.

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Best,

Priti

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Illustration Credit: Amy Clarke, Chembe Collaborative

I. GUEST ESSAY

Global Health Financing Crisis: Dog-Eat-Dog or A Constructive Prioritization?

By Jon Lidén

Jon Lidén leads Anthropos Development, working on global development advocacy, and on resource mobilization in the sector. He was the Chief Strategist for the Communications Agency Blossom. He was also WHO’s Head of Communications from 1999 to 2003 and the Global Fund’s Communications Director from 2003 to 2012. He can be reached at: jonl@anthroposconsult.org.

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It’s been a rough few weeks. That is if you sit in Geneva or Washington DC and see colleagues who thought they were in safe, long-term jobs have to clean their desks and look for new work. If you run emergency services in South Sudan or Myanmar or any one of hundreds of other frontline battlefields in the global fight against disease, rough doesn’t cover it. The last few weeks have been tragic, heartbreaking and cruel.

The sudden and brutal end to billions of dollars in global health assistance has been costly: in thousands of lives lost; in wasted medicines and supplies that cannot be distributed; in projects and research that will end with no conclusions or results. As damaging as the cutoff of services and treatment is, the infrastructure, supply chains, surveillance and information networks that are gone overnight are even harder to rebuild.

In other words, this is not only a funder walking away; this is the equivalent of filling cement in the plumbing and tearing the cables out of the wall as you leave a house.

Now, as the shock and anger about the cynical callousness of the U.S. administration’s gutting of USAID slowly dissipate, the challenge will be to see what can be done to rebuild a smaller, more efficient global health assistance architecture.

Image Credit: Photo by Tomáš Malík, Pexels