Total spending in global health
Last substantive revision: 2016-08-26
from some WHO report:
The subject of health expenditure is in itself a challenging topic. No exact measurement exists for the basic health expenditure in all countries. Even in countries with advanced statistical systems, some modifications are made periodically to estimated expenditure levels due to improvements in sources and methods. In spite of national efforts, not all relevant data are provided in the detail needed so estimations are still required. The GHED contains the best available estimations/data of the variables to date.
From another WHO report (page 2):
In 2011, US$ 6.9 trillion was spent on health. [… by whom? The “Key facts” section doesn’t say]
Page 7 elaborates:
In 2011, the world spent a total of US$ 6.9 trillion on health at exchange rates or I$ 7.2 trillion (International dollars taking into account the purchasing power of different national currencies). The geographical distribution of financial resources for health is uneven. There is a 20/80 syndrome in which 34 OECD countries make up less than 20% of the world’s population but spend over 80% of the world’s resources on health.
From the same report (page 3):
Increasing external support
If all donor countries were to immediately honor their overseas development assistance pledges, more than three million lives would be saved by 2015.
I’m not sure what these pledges are and how much money they add up to, but finding that would yield one estimate of the cost per life saved.
Page 6:
Half to two-thirds of total government spending on health is used for hospital care.
Page 9, which indicates that the spending figure from 2011 might be quite a bit off, since health spending seems to change a lot in just a few years:
Trends between 2001–2005 show significant increases in total expenditures on health in the group of low-income countries. Taken as a group, these countries spent $11 (in 2005 US$) per capita health in 2001, a figure that includes contributions from external sources such as bilateral and multilateral partners and foundations. This had increased to $15 in 2005, and $21 in 2011. This represents an increase of 85% over the period.
Other sources to look at for funding info:
IATI tracks some amount of international aid in a standard format. According to their 2015 annual report:
US$78 billion has been reported to IATI this year (2015 disbursements and expenditure up to 30 October 2015)
- Wikipedia’s list of countries by total health expenditure per capita uses both OECD stats as well as WHO’s GHED (but oddly, via the World Bank)
- The Gates Foundation also has a grants database that’s a little lacking in some ways, but probably good enough to try to use
From their fact sheet:
Total grant payments since inception (through Q4 2015): $36.7 billion
Some interesting things you can do with the grants database. First, narrow down to malaria, then check “issue” again to see the overlap with other issues:
Malaria (350)
Discovery and Translational Sciences (14)
Vaccine Delivery (8)
Vaccine Development (7)
Pneumonia (5)
Enteric Diseases and Diarrhea (4)
Integrated Development (4)
Neglected and Infectious Diseases (3)
Integrated Delivery (3)
Neglected Tropical Diseases (3)
Family Health: Family Planning (2)
Tuberculosis (2)
Global Policy & Advocacy (1)
Communications (1)
HIV (1)
Polio (1)
Strategic Partnerships (1)Or malaria grants by year (that I’ve sorted by year):
2016 (13)
2015 (38)
2014 (31)
2013 (22)
2012 (29)
2011 (34)
2010 (31)
2009 and earlier (152)
- Individual annual reports put out by various orgs (which ones?)
Private donations in the US: Charity Navigator and NPT give same numbers for 2015, namely $373 billion (but not all of this is health).
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