Hi Jason, you’re right that our proposal is that donors would shift away from funding these kinds of programmes directly but that instead they would not only finance services at the margin but also provide technical support to prioritise and then deliver on those local priorities. I guess it’s the health policy version of the “teach a man to fish” principle. Sure, giving bed nets or antiretrovirals does some good, but helping to build an effective health system is better. And I’m not at all convinced that governments wouldn’t fund these high value services instead. I would say it’s more that administrators take whatever help is being offered and then try to run a health system around it, but managing these donations takes work and makes it harder to strengthen the national system.
Hi Jason, you’re right that our proposal is that donors would shift away from funding these kinds of programmes directly but that instead they would not only finance services at the margin but also provide technical support to prioritise and then deliver on those local priorities. I guess it’s the health policy version of the “teach a man to fish” principle. Sure, giving bed nets or antiretrovirals does some good, but helping to build an effective health system is better. And I’m not at all convinced that governments wouldn’t fund these high value services instead. I would say it’s more that administrators take whatever help is being offered and then try to run a health system around it, but managing these donations takes work and makes it harder to strengthen the national system.