Giving Compass' Take:

• Here are four effective funding strategies for addressing global health and development issues that need creative funding solutions. 

• How can global health funders better understand which approaches are useful and which are unsuccessful? 

• Read about how you can make an impact on global health. 

Over $150 billion is put into foreign aid spending every year. Aid is especially important for governments in low-income countries, where it often exceeds 20% of their total expenditure. This has to be split between different priorities and strategies and naturally, some strategies are more effective than others.

With so much at stake in human lives and money, it’s important to look back and reflect on what worked and what didn’t. In the last month, several insiders have commented on the efforts of major health funders and their strategies. While there have seen some exemplary successes, major shortcomings have also been identified.

The West African Ebola outbreak of 2014–2016 claimed 11,000 lives, cost an estimated US$53 billion, and caused the collapse of health systems in the area. The outbreak left the global health community with some thinking to do — how had this outbreak got so out of control, and what could we do better next time?

In contrast, a success story has emerged in the form of a program to eliminate neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). NTDs are a group of 20 mainly parasitic and bacterial infectious diseases. They affect over 2.7 billion people globally, and cost more than 350,000 lives each year. On top of the cost to human life is a huge burden of disability and economic disadvantage.

Still, there are some generalizable principles that apply to good funding, originally laid out by the World Bank itself:

  • Support good, pre-existing ideas and infrastructure
  • Have a clear end in mind, and track progress
  • Funding should be a catalyst for growth
  • Coordination between donors

Read the full article about effective aid funding by Nicole Wheeler at Medium.