Necessary Increase of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in support of Health

The calculation of the potential volume of financial resources to be provided through international cooperation assumes that all member countries that joined the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) before 2000, will meet as a minimum the recommendation of the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health to provide 0.1 % of GNI to improve health services and conditions in developing countries (exception: Greece). The few countries that surpass this level are expected to maintain the GNI ratio achieved in 2013. For those countries, which joined the European Union after 2000 the target level to reach by 2020 is set at 0.05 % of GNI in line with the respective commitments to increase total ODA by 2015 agreed by EU for these members. The growth rates of the economic output of all donor countries were calculated on the basis of the data published by IMF in the World Economic Outlook in April 2015.

The initial GNI ratios of ODA grants for health provided by the 17 European DAC member countries in 2013 were derived from the project-level research for both bilateral cooperation and multilateral contributions. For the non-European DAC members the figures for bilateral ODA in support of health is based on officially reported aggregate data, whereas the calculation of multilateral aid is resulting from the before-mentioned ODA analysis. The points of departure for the rest of included donor countries were estimated using the DAC information on GNI ratios of total ODA and applying the average health share derived from the study for the 23 European and non-European DAC members.

The adjusted figure of total ODA for health to take into account the differences between exchange rates and internal price levels applies the weighted average of the country-specific ratios of amounts resulting from the mixed calculation and values at market exchange rates. In this procedure only those countries that exhibit a financing gap in the respective year are included, while the relative weight corresponds to the share of the total required external funding. For 2020 the projected factor calculated this way amounts to 1.76, which means that one US$ (in 2013 terms) buys health-related goods and services that would cost 1.76 US$ in the United States assuming that half of the provided resources are spent in the domestic market and that the local price levels of health commodities are equal to the average of the bundle of goods that make up GDP. Evidently, this factor does only apply if ODA for health is distributed exactly according the foreseen financing needs. Due to the probability explained above that more than 50 % of the required health expenditure may correspond to cost items determined by external economic factors the figures resulting from the adjustment may represent an upper bound estimate.

See an Overview of Required Health ODA by main Funding Source