Learning from the past: A systems approach to facility financing reforms

  There is a growing consensus among health financing specialists that low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) should ensure that government-owned health facilities receive some public funding directly and have the flexibility to spend it. The term direct facility financing (DFF) has come to be associated with such reforms that have drawn support from the Lancet […]

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How the World Trade Organization could facilitate access to COVID-19 health technologies?

Governments have faced difficult decisions over the past months, but the decision to remove unnecessary barriers to accessing COVID-19 health technologies like vaccines, diagnostics and treatments should be an obvious one. This decision is currently under debate among member states of the World Trade Organization, who are considering a proposal to waive global intellectual property […]

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Building sustainable health financing options for emergency response: Lessons from the COVID-19 response in Africa

  The ferocity with which global pandemic has affected countries globally has highlighted the importance of emergency public financing. The rapid spread of the disease requires a rapid, proactive and comprehensive approach in order to control its transmission. As such, governments need to have adequate funds availed in a timely manner to the health sector […]

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Learning through partnerships to build stronger health systems for Universal Health Coverage (UHC)

  Increasingly aid is moving towards a bilateral partnership model of institutional health partnerships to complement multi-lateral efforts through bodies such as the World Health Organization (WHO).1 The UK government, in its recent aid strategy2, set out a move towards partnership approaches such as the Better Health Programme (BHP); a co-developed programme of technical collaboration […]

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Des mesures pour protéger l’indépendance et l’intégrité de la recherche en santé mondiale

Katerini T. Storeng, Seye Abimbola, Dina Balabanova, David McCoy, Valéry Ridde, Véronique Filippi, Sidsel Roalkvam, Grace Akello, Melissa Parker et Jennifer Palmer au nom des signataires Document traduit avec Deepl puis corrigé par Maeva Belloiseau et Valéry Ridde .  The article was originally published in the BMJ Global Health as an Editorial titled, ” Action […]

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Global health governance – to support the new or to strengthen the old?

The common norms and rules-based order on which international cooperation has been based for seven decades are increasingly being challenged. The rise of new economic powers since the post-1945 creation of the Bretton Woods institutions – including the establishment of the World Bank in 1944 and World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1948 – has caused […]

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Poised to strike: global plan to tackle snakebite demands urgent action

Imagine it is twilight and you are walking back to your village after a long day working in the fields. Suddenly you feel acute pain in your calf. Out of the corner of your eye you see a flash of movement: a snake. Was it a cobra? A viper? Or a less harmful species? You […]

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We need to question all ‘donor fads’, not only performance-based financing

By Shola Molemodile I applaud Paul and colleagues, authors of the recent BMJ Global Health paper on performance-based financing in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), for being bold. We need more daring authors in health systems and global health, who are unafraid to state the obvious as these authors have done. While many may be […]

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Towards a more balanced rethinking of performance-based financing

By Maarten Oranje In a recently published paper in BMJ Global Health, a group of authors (Paul et al) challenged overly optimistic views on performance-based financing (PBF) in the health sector, and its implementation in low- and middle-income countries. While some of the issues they raised are legitimate, the paper paints an overall picture of […]

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Rethinking performance-based financing: sustainability must be part of the debate

By Priscilla N Owusu In the recent BMJ Global Health article Paul et al critique the notion that performance-based financing (PBF) is an effective approach to improving health service delivery in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). They do so by highlighting concerns about the mixed evidence supporting the efficacy of the intervention.  Using Rwanda as […]

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