Every year, more than 5 million mothers, children, and adolescents die from preventable conditions in 50 countries across the world. That’s almost 10 deaths every minute. Without access to quality healthcare, women and children are not given a fair chance to work and thrive. As a result, countries lose billions of dollars because of poor health and nutrition.
One of the Sustainable Development Goals is to ensure good health and well-being by 2030. But at the moment, a yearly funding gap of US$33 billion is standing in the way of progress.
The Global Financing Facility (GFF) was set up in 2015 to close that gap and end deaths caused by preventable diseases. Their work has made an enormous difference in Cameroon, the DRC, Liberia, Nigeria, and Uganda. With support from the GFF, co-financiers, and private sector partners, over 31 million women, children, and adolescents in those five countries gained access to quality health and nutrition services.
Here’s how the GFF achieves these phenomenal results:
1. Increasing government financing to fight maternal, newborn, and child deaths.
All countries that join the GFF agree to spend extra domestic resources for health. Before becoming a GFF partner, Cameroon allocated 6% of its health budget to women and children’s health. As a GFF partner, they are committed to allocating 20% of their budget to these services by 2020. In Nigeria, the GFF’s support (and advocacy from ONE’s Make Naija Stronger Campaign!) is expected to help mobilize US$150 million in new domestic funding per year for primary health care!
2. Ensuring governments and donors are advancing key priorities together.
In Nigeria, the GFF helped a range of donors support the government in delivering on the Basic Minimum Package of Health Services. This package includes access to vaccines, treatment for malaria, and insecticide-treated mosquito nets. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the GFF was similarly able to align funding from eight different donors to scale up essential services. In 2017 alone, almost 40,000 more people received tuberculosis vaccinations as a result of these efforts. And these government health services help to improve the overall performance and effectiveness of healthcare.
3. Paying health facilities based on their performance.
In the DRC, as a result of the GFF’s country-led investment, health facilities receive financial incentives for increasing the quantity and quality of maternal and child services. In facilities that participated, antenatal care consultations increased by 14% and assisted delivery increased by nearly 20%.
This November, leaders will be gathering in Norway for GFF’s Replenishment Conference with the goal of raising an additional $2 billion for the partnership. This funding will allow GFF to provide essential healthcare services in an additional 23 countries. This extra funding will bring us one huge step closer to ensuring a healthy world by 2030.
