A New World Health Era

Abstract

Unprecedented economic progress and demands for social protection have engendered an economic transition in health in many low- and middle-income countries, characterized by major increases in domestic health spending and growing national autonomy. At the global level, development assistance is refocusing on fragile states, the poorest communities, and cooperation on global public goods like health security, technical norms, and innovation. Intergovernmental organizations like WHO need the wherewithal and support to provide leadership and to properly advance this new world health era.

FIGURE 1.

Financing Trends in Developing Countries, 2000–2014 (in US$, billions, 2013 prices) Note: Public domestic finance is defined as total government revenue. Gross-fixed capital formation by the private sector was used as an indicator for private domestic finance. Private international finance is the sum of foreign direct investment, portfolio equity and bonds, commercial banking and other lending, and personal remittances. Public international finance equals the total official flows (official development assistance and other official flows). Source: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (2016).

FIGURE 2.

A New Chapter in International Health History Note: This graph is only a didactic tool; historical periods often overlap and vary from one country or region to another, and many components of one period carry over to future ones.

FIGURE 3.

Universal Health Coverage^a: The New Frontier for Global Health ^a The graph assesses the proportion of the population affiliated with national health insurance or social, private, or micro- insurance schemes. Source: This graph was first published in Garret (2009)³⁹ and later updated in the International Labour Organization (2017).