Moving Beyond Business as Usual: Financing & Innovation in Global Health

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3 — ensuring healthy lives and promoting well being for all — is projected to cost as much as $89 billion a year.[i]Despite significant progress made to date, we will not be able to achieve this goal without unlocking new and significant sources of funding. In fact, as those of us who work in this field know all too well, we are facing a short window to close resource gaps before existing health crises overtake current responses.

If we are to reach the SDGs we must think differently.

Certainly we must think differently with respect to HIV and AIDS. In order to end AIDS by 2030 — the target set by the SDGs – we will assuredly need greater resources. And yet, Funders Concerned About AIDS’ (FCAA) resource tracking report has shown that, overall, funding has been holding relatively steady — around the $600-650 million mark — for the past eight years and is still down eight percent from its pre-global economic crisis height.

According to UNAIDS, in order to substantially bend the curve toward ending the epidemic in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) by 2030 a 76 percent increase in investment is needed by 2020. In 2014, philanthropic resources to LMIC totaled only two percent of global resources available – far from what will be needed each year to curtail the epidemic. And far from what is required to end AIDS by 2030.

While the private sector and philanthropy have long played an important role in global health, contributing not only financial resources but also intellectual capital, capacity building and advocacy support, what we now seek to achieve requires us to move beyond traditional methods. We will need to explore unconventional approaches and non-traditional partnerships. Ultimately, we must build a vibrant global health marketplace that includes unique contributions from the public, private and philanthropic sectors.

That’s why FCAA is excited to be a partner at the inaugural Financing & Innovation in Global Health Forum (FIGH) next week. Taking place on the margins of the World Bank spring meeting, FIGH is intended to help unlock the capital needed to achieve global health goals. By bringing together a unique mix of stakeholders — governments, corporations, philanthropy, academia, finance  and innovators, among others — FIGH seeks to spark the deployment of blended finance, creativity, entrepreneurship, and technology to drive effective and transformative global health investment.

We are at a crucial crossroads in global health. Platforms like FIGH encourage us to be flexible and innovative and to think creatively when it comes to funding solutions for global health issues. Because one thing is absolutely clear – we will not end AIDS by 2030 through business as usual.