Countdown to 2015: tracking donor assistance to maternal, newborn, and child health

Seizing the Big Missed Opportunity: Linking HIV and Maternity Care Services in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…There are also programmatic and technical challenges and the need for context-specific approaches to be developed. 33 Donor 34 This study found that of about US$1.9 billion for all maternal, neonatal and child health services in 2003 and 2004, the proportion for maternal health fell from about a third to about a quarter. Over 90% of funding was project-specific (as opposed to general or sector budget support), of which less than half focused on maternal, neonatal and child health (versus funds allocated to general health care, TB and malaria).…”

Global cost of child survival: estimates from country-level validation

“…31 Better instruments and processes, such as subaccounts for child health 32 and the monitoring of current (under-)spending , strengthen the case for investing in child survival and help direct resources towards effective uses. Both external and in-country financing can play a key role, especially in countries with weak health systems.…”

Donor Support and the Impacts on Health System Strengthening in Sub-Saharan Africa: Assessing the Evidence through a Review of the Literature

“…What is of critical concern is that not all the donor support targeted at improving healthcare delivery is reaching communities with the greatest need or being delivered in a manner that is proving effective [3,12,13]. For example, while aids for HIV/AIDS and health infrastructure have been used to strengthen health systems, and in some cases primary health care services have been improved, overall, there are reports of concerns, tooamong them, a temporal association between increasing HIV/AIDS funding and stagnant funding for reproductive health, and accusations that scarce personnel are siphoned off from other health care services by offers of betterpaying jobs in HIV/AIDS programs [5,14,15].…”