La OPS, el Banco Mundial y el BID se unen para fortalecer el financiamiento de la salud en el Caribe – OPS/OMS
Washington DC, June 5, 2024 (PAHO) – Under the umbrella of the Alliance for Primary Health Care (A4PHC), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). convened this week the Caribbean Health Financing Forum, a two-day interactive event to explore ways to strengthen health financing in that region.
Representatives from the health and finance ministries of the Caribbean, including Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, participated in the forum held at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC
During the forum, Dr. Rhonda Sealey-Thomas, PAHO Deputy Director, highlighted the region’s leadership in primary health care and emphasized the need for comprehensive health financing strategies. Likewise, she noted the challenges to ensuring sustainable financing, such as the Caribbean’s dependence on global tourism revenues, the increase in natural disasters induced by climate change and the disproportionate impact of external economic shocks.
Currently, public health spending in the region is low (3.6% of GDP) and out-of-pocket expenses are high (almost 31% of current health spending). This places a significant burden on households and often leads to catastrophic health expenditures and impoverishment.
However, according to the Deputy Director of PAHO, «the analysis of fiscal space, the mobilization of national resources, greater financial protection and better efficiency and coordination in health financing» would allow the region to build resilient health systems based in primary health care.
The Caribbean Health Financing Forum covered a range of topics, including advancing health financing reforms, reversing the deterioration of financial protection for universal health coverage, lessons learned from health insurance . and strategies to mobilize, pool and allocate resources for universal health financing. Additionally, attendees shared country-specific presentations and experiences, focusing on strategic purchasing, use of data, and driving health financing reforms in primary care.
In closing the Forum, Mary Lou Valdez, Deputy Director of PAHO, highlighted the critical need to improve the production and analysis of information that allows countries to identify people who face financial barriers to accessing health services and understand . the main factors that drive out-of-pocket spending, which can generate economic difficulties for the Caribbean population.
«Let us move forward and translate our discussions into actions,» he advocated, reiterating PAHO’s commitment to collaborating with all countries, together with the World Bank and the IDB, to continue dialogue and provide support in the implementation of national strategies aimed at
Among the main outcomes of the Forum deliberations were the urgent need to generate data, build capacity in health financing and facilitate the exchange of experiences to advance health financing policies within the framework of universal health and resilient health systems based on primary care in the Caribbean.
Alliance for Primary Health Care in the Americas
The Alliance for Primary Health Care in the Americas (A4PHC), a collaboration between PAHO, the World Bank and the IDB, aims to drive investment, innovation and the implementation of policies and initiatives to transform health systems . in the region of the Americas, placing special emphasis on primary health.
