Crises force countries to boost health funding, says Africa CDC
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) says rising global economic pressures, including higher oil prices, are prompting countries to rethink how they finance healthcare and secure essential medical countermeasures.
Prof. Yap Boum II, Deputy Incident Manager for Mpox at the Africa CDC Incident Management Support Team (IMST), disclosed the developments on Friday during the weekly high-level regional press briefing.
Boum II highlighted the challenges posed by international crises, noting that the Africa CDC’s operations and partner deployments in several countries were being affected by global economic pressures.
“We are still in the process of assessing how our operations and those of our partners are being impacted, but these pressures are driving local manufacturing agendas.
“Countries are realising the need to stockpile essential medical countermeasures to reduce vulnerability to global supply shocks,” Boum II added.
According to him, a key strategy being implemented is building domestic expertise in health financing to help countries manage resources more sustainably.
“Twenty financial experts are being deployed in high-priority countries to support Ministries of Health in designing sustainable strategies.
“In one country, the Ministry recently approved the profile of an expert who will advise on national health financing,” he added.
Boum II cited examples of innovative approaches, including introducing a two per cent tax on imported goods in some countries, with revenue earmarked for health budgets.
He also noted efforts to reduce inefficiencies, such as ghost workers.
“In one case, a country was losing 800 million dollars annually due to salaries paid to non-existent employees.
“Digitalisation and auditing reforms are expected to recover significant resources for healthcare,” Boum II added.
He emphasised the importance of integrated health planning, moving away from siloed programmes for diseases like HIV and tuberculosis toward unified national health strategies.
Additionally, he said debt swaps were being explored as a mechanism to channel funds directly into health investments, with the World Health Organization recently recruiting a special advisor to support such initiatives.
“These measures, from financial expertise to digital accountability and debt strategies, are designed to ensure that countries can sustain healthcare financing even amidst global crises,” he said.
Supreme news reports that a debt swap is when a country uses money it would normally pay to creditors to fund programme s such as healthcare, education, or environmental projects.
Instead of repaying debt, the funds are redirected to investments that directly benefit the country and its people.
