How countries cope with competing demands and expectations: perspectives of different stakeholders on priority setting and resource allocation for health in the era of HIV and AIDS

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Seni Kouanda¹  Fuseini Sataru²  Victor Mwapasa³  Andriamampianina Ralisimalala⁴  Mbela Kiyombo⁵  David Plummer⁶  Lucie Blok⁷  Anne Coolen⁷  Françoise Jenniskens⁷  Georges Tiendrebeogo⁷ 

[1] Biomedical and Public health Department, Institute of Research in Health Science (IRSS), Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso;Centre for Health and Social Services, Accra, Ghana;College of Medicine, University of Malawi, Blantyre, Malawi;Department of Community Health, National Institute of Public and Community Health (INSPC), Antananarivo, Madagascar;Ecole de Santé Publique, Kinshasa, Congo;James Cook University & Queensland Health, Townsville, Australia;Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;

关键词: HIV and AIDS;    Health systems strengthening;    Priority setting;    Needs and priorities;    Sector-wide approaches;    Sub-Saharan Africa;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-12-1071

 received in 2012-07-03, accepted in 2012-11-13,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundHealth systems have experienced unprecedented stress in recent years, and as yet no consensus has emerged as to how to deal with the multiple burden of disease in the context of HIV and AIDS and other competing health priorities. Priority setting is essential, yet this is a complex, multifaceted process. Drawing on a study conducted in five African countries, this paper explores different stakeholders′ perceptions of health priorities, how priorities are defined in practice, the process of resource allocation for HIV and Health and how different stakeholders perceive this.MethodsA sub-analysis was conducted of selected data from a wider qualitative study that explored the interactions between health systems and HIV and AIDS responses in five sub-Saharan countries (Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Madagascar and Malawi). Key background documents were analysed and semi-structured interviews (n = 258) and focus group discussions (n = 45) were held with representatives of communities, health personnel, decision makers, civil society representatives and development partners at both national and district level.ResultsHealth priorities were expressed either in terms of specific health problems and diseases or gaps in service delivery requiring a strengthening of the overall health system. In all five countries study respondents (with the exception of community members in Ghana) identified malaria and HIV as the two top health priorities. Community representatives were more likely to report concerns about accessibility of services and quality of care. National level respondents often referred to wider systemic challenges in relation to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Indeed, actual priority setting was heavily influenced by international agendas (e.g. MDGs) and by the ways in which development partners were supporting national strategic planning processes. At the same time, multi-stakeholder processes were increasingly used to identify priorities and inform sector-wide planning, whereby health service statistics were used to rank the burden of disease. However, many respondents remarked that health system challenges are not captured by such statistics.In all countries funding for health was reported to fall short of requirements and a need for further priority setting to match actual resource availability was identified. Pooled health sector funds have been established to some extent, but development partners′ lack of flexibility in the allocation of funds according to country-generated priorities was identified as a major constraint.ConclusionsAlthough we found consensus on health priorities across all levels in the study countries, current funding falls short of addressing these identified areas. The nature of external funding, as well as programme-specific investment, was found to distort priority setting. There are signs that existing interventions have had limited effects beyond meeting the needs of disease-specific programmes. A need for more comprehensive health system strengthening (HSS) was identified, which requires a strong vision as to what the term means, coupled with a clear strategy and commitment from national and international decision makers in order to achieve stated goals. Prospective studies and action research, accompanied by pilot programmes, are recommended as deliberate strategies for HSS.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Jenniskens et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.