July 03, 2023

New WHO platform aims to provide equitable healthcare for all

topic:	Health and Sanitation
editor:	Bob Koigi

Primary healthcare services are typically the first point of contact for vulnerable and underserved populations, especially in low and middle-income countries. In fact, statistics show that an estimated 90 percent of essential health services can be delivered through primary intervention, in local clinics and by nurses, doctors and other medical personnel. 

These services are crucial to boosting medicare, preventing diseases, taming the need for prohibitive secondary and tertiary services and promoting rehabilitation.  Yet this crucial health aspect has had to contend with a myriad of challenges, such as lack of necessary personnel, limited skills, poor equipment and a dearth of governmental support. The situation has been exacerbated by emerging health shocks, including pandemics, as a lack of financing complicates the system.

The World Health Organization had estimated that before the COVID-19 pandemic, low-income countries needed an extra $371 billion each year cumulatively by 2030 to attain the health-related Sustainable Development Goals. The UN body further noted that to prepare for future pandemics, $31.1 billion annually in investment was needed, with about one third of these funds required to come from international financing. 

It is therefore timely and historic that a new approach dubbed the Health Impact Investment Platform has been launched by the World Health Organization and multilateral banks, The African Development Bank (AfDB), the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) to champion innovative and sustainable financing models to primary health interventions. 

The platform, for starters, is proposing Ꞓ1.5 billion in concessional loans and grants to target primary health care services, primarily to focus on underserved communities. 

A secretariat of the platform will work with governments to develop and prioritise national primary healthcare interventions, even as it looks for investments to support the governments’ plans. In the words of Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director General: "Primary Health Care serves as the 'eyes and ears' of a country's health system, reaching to the very communities where people live.” 

While the Health Impact Investment Platform is a welcome move, for it to have meaningful and tangible results, it must have transparent, fair and equitable models of loans and disbursements that, like it envisions on paper, reaches the very people who deserve this primary care. 

As pandemics have shown us, health is a global issue that requires the intervention and attention of all. No one is safe until we are all safe. Governments, private sector, international community and even multilateral institutions must step up their resolve to embrace solutions that leave no one behind. 

Image by CDC

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