Dr Devi Sridhars analysis of global health funding widely cited
A recent article in PLoS Medicine (25 September) by Devi Sridvar, Who Sets the Global Health Research Agenda? The Challenge of Multi-Bi Financing, is garnering widespread attention.
Devis article assesses the recent trend in global health of multi-bi financing, the practice of bilateral donors choosing to route non-core fundingearmarked for specific sectors, themes, countries, or regionsthrough multilateral agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, as well as the emergence of new multistakeholder initiatives such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the GAVI Alliance. Devi notes that there is a risk this trend will mean that difficult choices about priority-setting in health will be made in the marketplace of global initiatives, rather than in the community that will have to live with those choices. Developing country health ministers have alleged that this funding mechanism imposes the priorities of powerful states and institutions on poorer countries, whose populations have little recourse to demand accountability or to influence these priorities.
The PLoS Medicine article can be read in full here. The analysis has been picked up by Reuters AlertNet (here), Voice of America (here),and MedicalXpress.com (here).
