Public health round-up

Financial bottlenecks – budget shortfalls, irregular funding flows, lack of flexibility in the use of public revenues – are major challenges for countries as they strive towards providing universal health coverage (UHC). To help countries achieve sustainable funding for UHC, World Health Organization (WHO) economists are developing a package of technical support for health ministries, so that they can work more effectively with the ministries responsible for government finance and planning decisions. This month, WHO economists will join health and budget officials from the 34 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries to find solutions to the challenges of achieving sustainable funding for their health systems. The meeting will take place on 16 and 17 February. It will be the fourth annual meeting of the Joint OECD Network on Fiscal Sustainability of Health Systems, which was established in 2011, driven in part by finance ministries’ concerns about the fiscal sustainability of the economy, given the large share of the budget allocated to health. “This network facilitates understanding and dialogue by bringing together senior officials from health and budget ministries to identify key challenges and the analytical work that is needed to make progress,” said Joe Kutzin, a health economist from WHO’s department of Health Systems Governance and Financing. “We’d like to adapt these mechanisms for use in lowand middleincome countries,” he said, adding: “Rolling out universal health coverage requires financial reform in countries, and health ministries cannot do this alone. It requires close collaboration with finance ministries.” Last December, WHO organized and hosted a meeting, entitled Fiscal Space, Public Finance Management and Health Financing, in Montreux, Switzerland, to look at how to provide sustainable funding for UHC. Health and finance officials and experts from a dozen countries participated, as did staff of several partner agencies, including the World Bank, the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, PEPFAR and the GAVI Alliance, UNAIDS, the United Kingdom Department for International Development, the Providing for Health Network, and the OECD. http://www.who.int/health_financcing/partner_agencies/event