The AU Commission’s joint meetings of African Ministers of Health and of Finance build on the African Leadership Meeting Declaration (ALM), in which governments committed to both increasing domestic investment in health and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of health spending. These meetings could hardly come at a more important time. They provide an opportunity to share experiences in sustaining health gains through reforms to mobilise additional resources for health and to improve the value for money of health spending.
To inform these discussions, ODI and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria have brought together perspectives from eminent leaders from Africa and from the global health community on the key priorities for African governments in responding to Covid-19 and investing in health.
The contributions highlight three critical areas that have been central to discussions:
- They recognise the decisive policy response to the pandemic across the continent and the ongoing importance of strong leadership and robust governance at national, regional and global levels.
- Reforms are important not just to mobilise more resources but also to drive efficiency gains. Creative responses to Covid-19 have led to innovations that can be scaled up to improve the productivity, resilience and sustainability of health systems.
- As Africa faces its sharpest economic contraction since the Great Depression, equity must be considered. This creates an imperative to rethink and redesign the social safety net to protect those with the fewest resources. This requires a focus on primary health care, addressing socioeconomic determinants of health and strengthening financial risk protection to ensure that out-of-pocket expenditures on health do not perpetuate inequity and create an additional ‘tax on the sick’.
The ALM aims to support governments to undertake the health financing reforms needed to achieve these goals through building capacity to make the right policy choices, tracking progress and to help governments to account to transform and build strong primary health care systems in countries.