Abstract
BackgroundThe Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2010 Study has published disability-adjusted life year (DALY) data at both regional and country levels from 1990 to 2010. Concurrently, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has published estimates of development assistance for health (DAH) at the country-disease level for this same period of time.FindingsWe use disease burden data from the GBD 2010 study and financing data from IHME to calculate ratios of DAH to DALYs across regions and diseases. We examine the magnitude of these ratios and how they have varied over time. We hypothesize that the variation in this ratio across regions would be relatively small. However, from 2006 to 2010, we find there was considerable variation in the levels of DAH per DALY across regions. For total funding, the relative standard deviation (standard deviation as a percentage of the mean) across regions was 50%. For DAH specific to HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, the relative standard deviations were 50%, 200% and 60%, respectively. While these deviations are high, with the exception of malaria, they have decreased since the 1990s.ConclusionsThere are no evident explanations for so much variation in funding across regions, especially holding the purpose of the funding constant. This suggests donors’ allocation processes have not been particularly sensitive to disease burdens. To maximize health gains, donors should explicitly incorporate new disease burden data along with the relative costs and efficacy of interventions into their allocation process.
Highlights
The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2010 Study has published disability-adjusted life year (DALY) data at both regional and country levels from 1990 to 2010
development assistance for health (DAH) is comprised of funds that originate in developed countries and are disbursed to developing countries with the stated purpose of improving population health
DAH estimates were obtained from the Financing Global Health series produced by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) [1-4]
Summary
DAH is comprised of funds that originate in developed countries and are disbursed to developing countries with the stated purpose of improving population health. DAH estimates were obtained from the Financing Global Health series produced by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) [1-4]. To generate the 2012 report, IHME collected data from entities that contributed to DAH from 1990 to 2012. Publicly available data, and information acquired via correspondence feed into the DAH dataset. We used the publicly-available dataset from the 2012 report to generate disbursement amounts through 2010, which is the most recent year for which disease-specific estimates are available [4]. In 2010, 79% of total DAH could be tracked to a specific focus area, such as HIV/AIDS, malaria or TB. Insufficient data exist on the remaining 21% to comment on its allocation across diseases or regions, but this “unallocable” fraction has decreased steadily in recent years as larger donors have embraced the practice of publicly sharing project-level data
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