Dismuss uses his bicycle ambulance to transport a young boy with malaria to the nearest clinic. He is a volunteer community healthcare worker in Chongwe district, and is trained to test for common diseases and administer basic drugs.
Credit:

Brent Stirton/Wellcome Photography Prize 2019

Licence: All Rights Reserved

Dismuss uses his bicycle ambulance to transport a young boy with malaria to the nearest clinic. He is a volunteer community healthcare worker in Chongwe district, Zambia and is trained to test for common diseases and administer basic drugs. His priority is to transport more serious malaria cases to the clinic, 14 km away, where they can be treated.

Future of Global Health Initiatives process

Over the last two decades, Global Health Initiatives have contributed to enormous progress in protecting lives and improving the health of people globally.

However, as the epidemiological, financial, and political landscape across the world shifts and brings new challenges, there is a need to think about how their roles and responsibilities could evolve to most efficiently, effectively and equitably contribute to global health progress over the next 15 to 20 years.

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The Future of Global Health Initiatives process aims to review the roles and responsibilities of Global Health Initiatives, build consensus for change, and catalyse collective action.

To do so it brings together a wide range of partners, including representatives from governments, global and regional health organisations, research institutions and civil society. The process will seek to re-balance the power dynamics between the donor and implementing countries, maximise lasting health impacts, and simplify the landscape for mobilising and delivering funds. 

What we want to achieve 

The Future of Global Health Initiatives (FGHI) process seeks to achieve the following objectives:  

  1. Global Health Initiatives are more efficient, effective and equitable in complementing and strengthening health system capacities and delivering health impacts.
  2. Financing streams across Global Health Initiatives – and the broader health architecture at national, regional and global levels – are better balanced and coordinated, with stronger mutual accountability for meeting current and future global health needs.     
  3. Global Health Initiatives incentivise increased and sustained domestic investments in health that are more efficiently, effectively and equitably allocated, implemented and accounted for to achieve universal health coverage. 

In doing so, it will learn from and build on other ongoing or recent alignment efforts in the health sector, such as the SDG3 Global Action Plan, the Global Financing Facility Alignment Working Group, and the work of the International Health Partnership and related initiatives.

Why is it needed and why now? 

Global Health Initiatives have contributed to enormous progress in protecting lives and improving the health of people globally, including significant progress against individual diseases like polio, malaria, tuberculosis and HIV, and increasing coverage of specific interventions like vaccines. 

However, there are issues of fragmentation and inefficiencies with the current system, and priority setting does not always align with collective and national health needs. 

The Future of Global Health Initiatives process therefore seeks to:

  • Address power imbalances in priority setting and decision making in global health architecture. 

  • Remove inefficiencies created by the fragmentation of Global Health Initiatives’ operating and funding procedures. 

  • Ensure sufficient prioritisation and coordination of health system strengthening investments for universal health coverage. 

  • Respond to political and economic shifts that present challenges for international resource mobilisation. 

  • Reflect the impact of significant epidemiological and demographic changes over the last two decades and projected for the future.

  • Respond to the evolving nature of the wider global health architecture as new actors and initiatives emerge and regional bodies assume an increasingly prominent role.  

Global Health Initiatives (GHIs)

Global Health Initiatives is a term used to refer to organisations that integrate the efforts of stakeholders around the world to mobilise and disburse funds to address health challenges, and do so by supporting the implementation of health programmes in low- and middle-income countries.

This includes the Global Funds to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, and Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, UNITAID and Global Financing Facility. International Financial or UN Institutions themselves are not the focus of the process, but their vital complementary role will be considered.

How the process will work 

Following an initial scoping and consultation period, the process was formally initiated in summer 2022 and is expected to run through 2023.

It is led by two Co-Chairs: Dr. Mercy M. Mwangangi, Chief Administrative Secretary, Ministry of Health, Kenya; and John-Arne Røttingen, Ambassador for Global Health, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway. They are complemented by a multi-stakeholder Steering Group and a broad coalition of interested organisations and governments, and supported by the Future of Global Health Initiatives Secretariat, led by Linda Muller.

As a member of the Steering Group, Wellcome will work with the Co-Chairs and partners to drive the process forward. Wellcome will play a critical and central role in the process’s Research and Learning Task Team, and host and fund the FGHI Secretariat.

More information 

Contact us 

For further information, please contact Clare Battle

c.battle@wellcome.org