Invest in Health
The Global Fund - "At a time of accelerating change, when the news cycle feels more like a cyclone, a historic meeting this weekend could be overlooked. It shouldn’t be. The health ministers of G20 countries are gathering for the first time – a clear indication of the role of health in global development agenda. (Blog by Marijke Wijnroks who will become Interim Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on 1 June. )
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The G20 has identified three pillars of that development agenda: building resilience, improving sustainability and assuming responsibility. While these broad themes can be applied to almost any sector, they are especially relevant to public health and global health security. When universal health coverage was included in the globally agreed Sustainable Development Goals, nations of the world committed to taking responsibility for the health of their citizenry by building resilient, sustainable systems for health. (...) Rather, and rightly, the commitment to universal health coverage in the SDGs is driven by the overwhelming evidence that investment in health systems returns economic dividends. The 2013 Lancet Commission on Investing in Health found that in low- and middle-income countries, health improvements drove 24 percent of full income growth between 2000 and 2011. (Photo: Tiyatien Health frontline health workers conducting baseline community health survey/Direct Relief/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) |