A Developing Country Perspective

Governments and development partners have increasingly invested in health over the last two decades with considerable success in many countries. The global community is now transitioning from the Millennium Development Goals to the even more ambitious Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) agenda. Achieving the SDG targets will require additional resources. However, levels of foreign aid are flat or declining, even as the need for domestic resources is on the rise. In consequence, we need more and better priority-setting in global health based on good evidence. This chapter argues that responsible priority-setting by international donors should involve greater focus on improving the quality of aid and on country ownership of development programs. Ultimately, governments should be the major financiers of their own health programs. This means that countries should gradually take increasing responsibilities over their own health systems, and development partners need to make sure that there is seamless transition of funding from aid dependency to self-reliance. Development partners should support countries to (1) acquire the necessary capacity to do their own priority-setting based on quality evidence, and (2) develop and effectively implement their health care financing strategies.