Berlin, 16 October 2018. Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) presented its Global Action Plan (GAP) at the World Health Summit (WHS) in Berlin. It represents the start of processes in which everyone in global health is to jointly work on a roadmap until September 2019 to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 3 (a healthy life for all) by 2030. The ONE Campaign welcomes the GAP and calls upon development partners, civil society, the private sector and academia to feed into this process. In order for the roadmap to be successful, it must set ambitious, measurable and time-bound objectives and hold all partners accountable.

 Gayle Smith, CEO of the ONE Campaign says: “Despite some brilliant progress since 2000, the international community is severely off track to reach globally-agreed health targets by 2030. Today’s Global Action Plan provides a historic opportunity to put that right – but only if  important details are added, including how much money must be invested, and where, to achieve these outcomes. Notably, WHO highlights citizen participation as essential for ensuring better health outcomes. Ultimately, this will be essential to drive accountability for results at all levels of government. ONE is keen to work alongside other partners to make this happen.”

ONE is ringing the alarm that donor assistance for global health has flat-lined since 2014, and domestic investments within low-income countries are not keeping pace with demand. The shocking reality is that today, aid for health per person in poor countries is only $36 a year and domestic spending is only $24 per person a year. Meeting universal health coverage targets by 2030 would require low-income countries to increase their domestic spending to $112 per person by 2030. By comparison, wealthy countries spend on average $3,600 per person per year. In order to meet global health targets agreed by 193 countries under the mantle of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 the SDG 3 action plan that will be presented next year must radically challenge the current approach to global health.   

Smith added: “ONE is delighted that Germany is hosting the World Health Summit, and we are counting on the German government to maintain its global leadership and send a signal to the rest of the world by meeting its commitment to the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria next year.”

Fore more information about the Global Action Plean, click here: http://bit.ly/2IYrIsY