Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs)
Where Does Global Health Funding Come From and Where Does It Go?
By Germán Velásquez
In theory, the World Health Organization (WHO) is the coordinating agency for global health. Influential private and public actors have claimed the relevance and central role of this United Nations (UN) agency. In practice, paradoxically, the money budgeted for health goes largely to other institutions and not to the WHO. New institutions and mechanisms have been created to which funds are channeled (GAVI, The Global Fund, Act-A, CEPI, COVAX, etc.). These institutions or mechanisms are, in most cases, public-private partnerships where the pharmaceutical industry is usually present. Official Development Assistance is important but represents only 1 per cent of what developing countries’ expenditure on health. How much is spent to promote global health and where this money goes is the subject of this paper. After the experience with COVID-19, a fundamental question that must be addressed is how the global public interest can be preserved by creating common public goods and protecting human rights in the prevention, preparedness, and response to present and future pandemics.
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De dónde viene y a dónde va el financiamiento para la salud mundial
Por Germán Velásquez
En teoría la OMS es la agencia coordinadora de la salud mundial, y los grandes actores, privados y públicos, revindican la relevancia y el rol central de esta agencia de Naciones Unidas. En la práctica, paradójicamente, los dineros para la salud van en gran parte a otras instituciones y no a la OMS o incluso se crean nuevas instituciones o mecanismos donde se canalizan los nuevos fondos (GAVI, Fondo Mundial, Act-A, CEPI, COVAX etc.) Estas instituciones o mecanismos son, en la mayoría de los casos, partenariados público-privados donde está presente la industria farmacéutica. La Ayuda Oficial para el Desarrollo es importante pero sólo representa el 1% de lo que invierten los países en desarrollo en salud. En qué se gasta para promover la salud global y a dónde va este dinero es el objeto de este documento. Una de las preguntas que debemos hacernos tras la experiencia con COVID-19 es cómo vamos a preservar el interés público global mediante la creación de bienes públicos comunes y la protección de los derechos humanos en las actividades de prevención, preparación y respuesta a las pandemias presentes y futuras.
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Issues in Financing Education as a Human Right: Central principles for public policy responses
by Kishore Singh
The realization of the right to education requires adequate financing of education. Public policy responses to the need and importance of financing education remain inadequate. And now there is a trend towards decreasing public investment in education. Not only should States shoulder the primary responsibility for education under human rights law, but non-State actors should also invest in education because of corporate social responsibility. Besides, the need and importance of preserving education as a public good and public interest in education should be kept in the forefront as regards multi-stakeholders and provision of education through public-private partnerships. The role devolves upon the parliamentarians in shaping regional and global architecture. In the conclusion, the author proposes ten central principles for a Global Alliance to do the task of world-wide advocacy in support of the architecture for financing education.
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COVID-19 Crisis and Developing Countries: Digital Health Perspective
By Ambassador Fauzia Nasreen, Dr. Azeema Fareed, Ms. Huma Balouch
Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South (COMSATS)
Technology and Innovation are quintessentially relevant especially in dealing with the multiple threats posed by COVID-19. Most developing countries are already under tremendous stress because of financial constraints, enormous development challenges and technology innovation and knowledge deficiencies. COVID-19 which has disrupted every walk of life is having a multiplier effect on many countries, posing difficult governance choices. Reform and reorientation of the health system and structure is fundamentally important in dealing with the public health issues in the post COVID-19 period, and digital health could help in providing solutions.
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The State of Play of Climate Finance – UNFCCC Funds and the $100 Billion Question
By Mariama Williams; editing support and data by Rajesh Eralil
Climate finance is key to achieving the ambitions set out in the Paris Agreement as well as in fulfilling the climate actions that developing countries have proposed to implement in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the key vehicles for implementing the agreement reached in Paris in 2015. However, there is much concern that the current flow of finance is inadequate to meet the expectations surrounding both the NDCs and the Paris Agreement. This brief presents quick snapshots of the state of play of climate finance of one dimension of the broad, complex and increasingly fragmented universe of climate finance. It focuses on the flow of climate finance that can be monitored and tracked under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the context of the developed countries’ collective goal of mobilizing US $100 billion annually to support developing countries’ climate actions. The issues on both the demand and supply side of climate finance flows are explored, with specific attention to the ebb and flows and achievements of the multilateral public funds. After highlighting some of the more serious challenges with the flow of climate finance, the brief ends with an overview of the key negotiating issues around future climate finance flows.
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Challenges of Investment Treaties on Policy Areas of Concern to Developing Countries
By Kinda Mohamadieh
Country experiences have revealed that international investment agreements (IIAs) could have an adverse policy impact on various policy areas that are generally important for developing countries in relation to the achievement of their development objectives. This policy brief gives an overview of challenges resulting from IIAs to major policy areas of concern to developing countries. These policy areas include industrial policy, tax reform, handling debt crisis, the use of capital controls, intellectual property rights, public-private partnerships, and climate change action in relation to investment in clean technologies.
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Public-Private Partnerships as the Answer . . . What was the Question?
By Manuel F. Montes
In discussions at the UN about achieving Agenda 2030, it has become de rigueur to highlight the role of the private sector. It is often introduced as the discovery of the idea that private sector investment and financing is indispensable to achieving Agenda 2030. For developed country diplomats and their associated experts this new celebrity treatment appears to be an article of faith, at least during negotiations on economic matters in the UN. They are foisting a misleading Trumpian exaggeration that is technically harmful to development policymaking and to Agenda 2030. (more…)
Growing Coalition to Intensify Efforts to Address Global Antimicrobial Resistance
The South Centre supports increased global and national level advocacy for policy change and action to prevent the post-antibiotic era from becoming a bleak reality. This effort is being strengthened with the recent addition of five leading environmental and public health organizations to the Antibiotic Resistance Coalition (ARC). The ARC is an independent coalition of members from six continents working in health, agriculture, consumer, and development sectors. (more…)
Public-private Partnerships in Global Health: Putting Business before Health?
Public and private sector interaction in health has always existed at the national level; in the United Nations (UN) system, public-private partnerships (PPPs) started at the end of the 1990s with the reform of the UN system launched by Kofi Annan. (more…)
