Abstract
SummaryThe year 2020 marked an important turning point in Japan's global health policy. While the global health community has been suffering serious damage to sustainable health financing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an independent commission on Japan's Strategy on Development Assistance for Health (DAH) launched an ambitious policy recommendation to double the amount of Japan's DAH during the post-COVID-19 era. This paper examines historical trends in DAH in Japan over the past 30 years based on published literature and comprehensive DAH tracking data and highlights priority areas for discussion on how DAH can be advanced to ensure equitable and efficient use of limited resources to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, including universal health coverage and pandemic preparedness, in low- and middle-income countries. Priority areas for discussion include: how and where to focus DAH for equitable health gains; how to provide DAH to support health system strengthening, including pandemic preparedness; and clarifying the role of DAH in global health functions.
Highlights
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has sparked an unprecedented level of interest in the past, present, and future of global health financing, in part because of the enormous and ongoing costs to countries around the world, regardless of socioeconomic level, of responding to the pandemic.[1]
According to Sch€aferhoff et al (2019), globally, only about 16.1% of Development assistance for health (DAH) was invested in global public goods in 2013, which increased to 17.1% in 2015 and declined to 15.4% in 2017.47 In addition, in 2013, 5.5% of DAH was invested in the management of cross-border externalities, including pandemic preparedness and control of antimicrobial resistance, which increased to 10.2% in 2015 and declined to 7.2% in 2017.47 Fully addressing the impact of a pandemic in most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) will require a strong health system that can respond, and affordable access to critical tools such as vaccines
According to the previous literature, Japan has disbursed a total of 2.3 billion USD toward addressing the health-related effects of COVID-19 in LMICs.[15]
Summary
While the global health community has been suffering serious damage to sustainable health financing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an independent commission on Japan’s Strategy on Development Assistance for Health (DAH) launched an ambitious policy recommendation to double the amount of Japan’s DAH during the post-COVID-19 era. This paper examines historical trends in DAH in Japan over the past 30 years based on published literature and comprehensive DAH tracking data and highlights priority areas for discussion on how DAH can be advanced to ensure equitable and efficient use of limited resources to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, including universal health coverage and pandemic preparedness, in low- and middle-income countries. Priority areas for discussion include: how and where to focus DAH for equitable health gains; how to provide DAH to support health system strengthening, including pandemic preparedness; and clarifying the role of DAH in global health functions.
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