PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Has the 'Golden Age' of global health funding come to an end?

As global economic troubles continue, cuts in global health funding from the US government and other donors may signal the conclusion of an era of rapid growth

2013-02-07
(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON, DC – Despite dire predictions in the wake of the economic crisis, donations to health projects in developing countries appear to be holding steady, according to new research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. After reaching a historic high of $28.2 billion in 2010, development assistance for health dropped in 2011 and recovered in 2012. The strong growth in spending from the GAVI Alliance and UNICEF counterbalanced declines in health spending among other donors. The new findings are being announced today at the Center for Global Development and published online as part of the fourth annual edition of IHME's financing series, Financing Global Health 2012: The End of the Golden Age? This report tracks development assistance for health from government aid agencies, multilateral donors, and private foundations and charities. It explores funding trends over three periods: the "moderate-growth" period from 1990 to 2001, the "rapid-growth" period from 2001 to 2010, and the "no-growth" period from 2010 to 2012. Financing Global Health 2012 also analyzes health spending from governments in developing countries between 1990 and 2010. For those interested in using the global health financing datasets compiled as part of this research, IHME provides detailed results data and the statistical code used to generate these results for download on its website. "There were predictions that the sky was going to fall on global health funding, but that didn't happen," said IHME Director and report co-author Dr. Christopher Murray. "Only time can tell whether the stagnation will continue, but the global health community needs to be prepared either way." Priority setting has become even more important as global health funding has flatlined. Many donors have been forced to re-evaluate funding decisions to adapt to a new global health landscape. From 2011 to 2012, overall health spending channeled through government aid agencies dropped by 4.4%. Development assistance for health from the US, the largest donor, dropped by 3.3%, and health funding from France and Germany declined by 13% and 9.1%, respectively. Among the six largest bilateral donors, only donations from the UK and Australia increased from 2011 to 2012. By combining health funding estimates with the results of the newly published Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2010, the report provides metrics that can help inform donor priority setting. GBD 2010 quantified premature death and disability, or disease burden, from 291 different diseases and injuries worldwide. Comparisons between the amount of development assistance for health that a country receives and its disease burden provide useful tools for assessing need versus funding. "This analysis highlights the mismatch between donor priorities and global health needs," said Amanda Glassman, Director of Global Health Policy and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. "Before you can make a decision on where to allocate resources, you must first understand where that money is most needed." Many developing countries with the highest disease burdens did not receive the most health funding. When comparing disease-specific funding and disease burden, such as malaria assistance versus burden of malaria, it becomes clear that certain countries receive much less funding than one might expect. For example, the low-income countries Burundi, Guinea, Mali, and Niger were among the top 20 countries in terms of malaria burden, but were not among the top 20 recipients of malaria funding. "For some diseases, there is a clear disconnect between funding and burden measured by both mortality and disability," explains IHME Assistant Professor Michael Hanlon. "These comparisons serve as a guide for policymakers to discuss, reassess, and improve upon their health spending." Other major findings from the report include: GAVI continued to have very strong rates of growth. In 2012, expenditure by GAVI reached an estimated $1.76 billion in 2012, a 41.9% increase over 2011.

The sub-Saharan African region received the largest share of health funding. In 2010 (the most recent year for which recipient-level estimates are available), sub-Saharan Africa's share was $8.1 billion, or 28.7% of total health funding.

Health funding for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and maternal, newborn, and child health continued to grow through 2010. DAH for health sector support, non-communicable diseases, and malaria fell slightly from 2009 to 2010.

Even at the peak of health funding from donors in 2010, the spending by governments on health in their own countries was $521 billion, more than 18 times higher than total donor funding in the same year. That country spending grew 6% from 2009 to 2010.

"Fluctuation in funding and the variance in global burden of disease highlight the need for policymakers to stay informed with the most accurate information available on the evolving global health landscape," Murray said.

### END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

A massive stellar burst, before the supernova

A massive stellar burst, before the supernova
2013-02-07
An automated supernova hunt is shedding new light on the death sequence of massive stars—specifically, the kind that self-destruct in Type IIn supernova explosions. Digging through the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) data archive housed at the Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), astronomers have found the first causal evidence that these massive stars shed huge amounts of material in a "penultimate outburst" before final detonation as supernovae. A focused search ...

Profiting from climate change

2013-02-07
The climate is getting warmer, and sea levels are rising – a threat to island nations. As a group of researchers lead by colleagues from the University of Bonn found out, at the same time, tiny single-cell organisms are spreading rapidly through the world's oceans, where they might be able to mitigate the consequences of climate change. Foraminifera of the variety Amphistegina are stabilizing coastlines and reefs with their calcareous shells. The study's results have now appeared in the international online journal "PLOS ONE." Countless billions of tiny, microscopic ...

Forecasting a supernova explosion

2013-02-07
Pasadena, CA—Type II supernovae are formed when massive stars collapse, initiating giant explosions. It is thought that stars emit a burst of mass as a precursor to the supernova explosion. If this process were better understood, it could be used to predict and study supernova events in their earliest stages. New observations from a team of astronomers including Carnegie's Mansi Kasliwal show a remarkable mass-loss event about a month before the explosion of a type IIn supernova. Their work is published on February 7 in Nature. Several models for the supernova-creation ...

Frequently prescribed drug used in concerning ways with harmful side effects

2013-02-07
TORONTO, Feb. 6, 2013—A popular class of drugs commonly used to treat sleep and mood symptoms continues to be frequently prescribed despite being known to have potentially life-threatening side effects. Previous studies have linked benzodiazepines – a medication class that may be used in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to treat symptoms of insomnia, depression, anxiety and shortness of breath – with adverse outcomes, but until now there has been little information on how frequently it's prescribed or who is using it. COPD, also known as emphysema or chronic ...

11,000 elephants slaughtered in national park

2013-02-07
LIBREVILLE, GABON (February 6, 2013): The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today that a national park, once home to Africa's largest forest elephant population, has lost a staggering 11,100 individuals due to poaching for the ivory trade. The shocking figures come from Gabon's Minkebe Park, where recent surveys of areas within the park revealed that two thirds of its elephants have vanished since 2004. The majority of these losses have probably taken place in the last five years. Gabon contains over half of Africa's forest elephants, with a population estimated ...

Children with ACL injuries require special treatment

2013-02-07
Until a child's bones have fully matured (in girls, typically by age 14; in boys, age 16), an injury to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL)—the primary, stabilizing ligament of the knee joint—requires special consideration, treatment and care to ensure appropriate healing and to prevent long-term complications. According to a review article in the February 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS), ACL injuries once were considered rare in children and adolescents. However, the number of ACL injuries in young athletes is on the ...

Study: Buying luxury -- hedonistic or just French?

Study: Buying luxury -- hedonistic or just French?
2013-02-07
A young woman in Tokyo pays 243,000 Yen for a Louis Vuitton suitcase emblazoned with the company's iconic monogram. A continent away, another woman purchases the same suitcase at the company's store on New York's 5th Avenue for the equivalent price in dollars, $3000. Why? What motivates their purchases? And, do those motivations hinge on their location? That is precisely what Professor Jaehee Jung and her collaborators at universities in 9 other countries sought to answer. Their findings published recently in the journal, Psychology & Marketing, compared consumers' ...

Smartphones, tablets help scientists improve storm forecasts

Smartphones, tablets help scientists improve storm forecasts
2013-02-07
The next advance in weather forecasting may not come from a new satellite or supercomputer, but from a device in your pocket. University of Washington atmospheric scientists are using pressure sensors included in the newest smartphones to develop better weather forecasting techniques. "With this approach we could potentially have tens or hundreds of thousands of additional surface pressure observations, which could significantly improve short-term weather forecasts," said Cliff Mass, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences. Owners of certain new Android smartphones and ...

Happiness increases with age, across generations

2013-02-07
Psychological well-being has been linked to many important life outcomes, including career success, relationship satisfaction, and even health. But it's not clear how feelings of well-being change as we age, as different studies have provided evidence for various trends over time. A new report published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveals that self-reported feelings of well-being tend to increase with age, but that a person's overall level of well-being depends on when he or she was born. Psychological scientist ...

Tiny capsule effectively kills cancer cells

2013-02-07
A tiny capsule invented at a UCLA lab could go a long way toward improving cancer treatment. Devising a method for more precise and less invasive treatment of cancer tumors, a team led by researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed a degradable nanoscale shell to carry proteins to cancer cells and stunt the growth of tumors without damaging healthy cells. In a new study, published online Feb. 1 in the peer-reviewed journal Nano Today, a group led by Yi Tang, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Development of next-generation one-component epoxy with high-temperature stability and flame retardancy

Scaling up neuromorphic computing for more efficient and effective AI everywhere and anytime

Make it worth Weyl: engineering the first semimetallic Weyl quantum crystal

Exercise improves brain function, possibly reducing dementia risk

Diamonds are forever—But not in nanodevices

School-based program for newcomer students boosts mental health, research shows

Adding bridges to stabilize quantum networks

Major uncertainties remain about impact of treatment for gender related distress

Likely 50-fold rise in prevalence of gender related distress from 2011-21 in England

US college graduates live an average of 11 years longer than those who never finish high school

Scientists predict what will be top of the crops in UK by 2080 due to climate change

Study: Physical function of patients at discharge linked to hospital readmission rates

7 schools awarded financial grants to fuel student well-being

NYU Tandon research to improve emergency responses in urban areas with support from NVIDIA

Marcus Freeman named 2024 Paul “Bear” Bryant Coach of the Year

How creating and playing terrific video games can accelerate the battle against cancer

Rooting for resistance: How soybeans tackle nematode invaders is no secret anymore

Beer helps grocery stores tap sales in other categories

New USF study: Surprisingly, pulmonary fibrosis patients with COVID-19 improve

In a landmark study, an NYBG scientist and colleagues find that reforestation stands out among plant-based climate-mitigation strategies as most beneficial for wildlife biodiversity

RSClin® Tool N+ gives more accurate estimates of recurrence risk and individual chemotherapy benefit in node-positive breast cancer

Terahertz pulses induce chirality in a non-chiral crystal

AI judged to be more compassionate than expert crisis responders: Study

Scale-up fabrication of perovskite quantum dots

Adverse childhood experiences influence potentially dangerous firearm-related behavior in adulthood

Bacteria found to eat forever chemicals — and even some of their toxic byproducts

London cabbies’ planning strategies could help inform future of AI

More acidic oceans may affect the sex of oysters

Transportation insecurity in Detroit and beyond

New tool enables phylogenomic analyses of entire genomes

[Press-News.org] Has the 'Golden Age' of global health funding come to an end?
As global economic troubles continue, cuts in global health funding from the US government and other donors may signal the conclusion of an era of rapid growth