Global health: Strengthening health systems worldwide
Project description
Title: SI Global Health
Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Country: Germany
Overall term: 2021 to 2023
Context
To ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages – this is the objective the United Nations committed to in Goal 3 of the 2030 Agenda (Sustainable Development Goal, SDG 3). The 2030 Agenda highlights the importance of cooperation between different countries to achieve development goals.
This is why the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) underlined once again in 2019 that a multilateral approach that is more coherent and less fragmented is required to achieve global health.
BMZ plans to gear the work of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) more towards strengthening national health systems. The use of financial resources is also to be monitored politically. To this end, BMZ is engaging with the boards of directors, technical committees and supervisory bodies of these multilateral initiatives in accordance with their development policy objectives.
In addition, the German Government is involved in global discourse and political processes on infectious diseases (especially HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and polio) with the aim of building partnerships, networks and instruments to prevent and combat these diseases.
The German Government is also promoting the use of digital technologies to make health systems more efficient. To this end, it is providing input into international processes and initiatives, drawing on expertise acquired when implementing health programmes in conjunction with other countries.
Objective
Developing health systems is a high priority in development work and contributes to achieving SDG 3: to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
Approach
The Global Health project is committed to ensuring that international financial resources are used in a way that is systemically relevant. It also contributes to making programmes aimed at combating infectious diseases more effective and efficient, and focusing global health efforts more on promoting national health systems.
The project provides particular support to BMZ in its endeavours to strengthen health systems and global health architecture. It works in three priority areas. Gender equality is an integral part of all its work.
- Advice on funds. The project supports BMZ in its work within the international supervisory bodies of GFATM, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and GPEI, integrating its experience in bilateral development cooperation. It also processes the latest information on the three funds into a format that is useful for German development cooperation actors.
- Technical advice and knowledge management. The project informs BMZ’s positions on selected infectious diseases, improves knowledge management in German development cooperation and makes this experience available via the Healthy DEvelopments web portal.
- Data and digital health. The third priority area consists of developing positions for BMZ in the area of data and digital health. To this end, it works to gain an overview of the situation and knowledge about implementation. In addition, the project monitors innovations, trends and global debate. It informs BMZ’s positions by participating in international initiatives and processes.
Latest update: October 2020