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IOM recommendations emphasize funding boost for global health effort
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The United States has a responsibility to assist developing countries in building on their existing health infrastructure by increasing their overseas financial commitments to global health, according to a report issued this week by the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the U.S. Commitment to Global Health.
The United States should increase its funding for overseas disease prevention and treatment to $15 billion per year by 2012 to achieve this goal, according to the committee’s findings. In addition, scale-up of existing preventive and therapeutic interventions and a boost in research on health problems that are endemic to low- and middle-income countries will be required.
During a webcast announcing the report, Jeffrey Koplan, MD, MPH, vice president of Global Health and director of the Global Health Institute at Emory University said that the United States needs to take a leadership role in public health worldwide.
“We love to go to developing countries and hear them thank us for the support, but tell us that they have made significant progress on their own,” Koplan said. “The United States needs to take a role in putting disadvantaged countries in a position to do this.”
Maria Freire, PhD,president of The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation and Ruth Levine, PhD,vice president and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, echoed those sentiments. All three panelists are members of the Institute of Medicine’s committee on the U.S. Commitment to Global Health.
Levine said that the United States needs to emphasize the development of sustainable public health systems, rather than just relief efforts.
The increase of U.S. funding for global health to $15 billion by 2012 should provide $13 billion per year for health-related millennium development goals — including treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis — and an additional $2 billion to balance the portfolio by targeting the growing problem of injuries and noncommunicable diseases, such as heart disease.
Of the $13 billion, $3.4 billion should support programs in areas that have been severely underfunded, including nutrition, family planning and reproductive health and strengthening countries' health care systems. Scaling up such programs will require improving the delivery of existing health interventions and the development of new diagnostic, preventive and treatment tools and services.