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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
To review the bidding: Future trends and current funding
>> Foreign Aid in the National Interest >> Chapter 3 >> To review the bidding Jump to Chapter 3 Sections:
>> Health, development and aid >> Broad progress, startling changes, persistent quandaries >> Health indicators: advances and obstacles >> Health systems and services >> To review the bidding >> Implications of trends for future directions >> Implications for the philosophy and pursuit of "foreign assistance" >> Notes >> Background paper >> References
The momentum of past health improvements will shift health patterns significantly in many developing regions.
A majority of developing countries will experience declining dependency ratios, the time when fewer children and elderly are dependent on the working age population for resources. These countries will have greater opportunity to invest in productive endeavors. The demographic shifts will be accompanied by changes in morbidity and mortality. Many countries have reached or will soon reach the Summit of Children goal for infant mortality reduction. For them, the key public health issues will include those which affect both the productivity of their labor forces and the health costs of the elderly. This disease profile is predominantly noncommunicable and chronic.
Even as the shift takes place, many traditional problems will persist, such as infectious diseases resurging because of resistance. The future pattern will be one of a growing chronic disease burden overlaid on top of a persisting reservoir of communicable diseases.
Simultaneously, some countries, many in southern Africa, will continue to have demographic and disease patterns more characteristic of past trends-high infant mortality, low life expectancy, and epidemiology dominated by infectious diseases.
For both old and new problems, the central concern will be self-reliance so that economic progress can be tied to the maintenance of public health progress. In turn, a central concern of selfreliance will be financial diversity, including private finance that already represents over half of all health resources. Political commitment is also key. For many developing countries, self-reliance in such traditional concerns as immunizations is increasingly not a matter of inadequate resources. It is more a matter of political will, commitment, and management.
Implications of trends for future directions
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Last Updated on: October 07, 2009 |
