Source · Select Committees · International Development Committee
Recommendation 6
6
Paragraph: 36
Covid-19 has affected healthcare systems in developing countries negatively.
Recommendation
Covid-19 has affected healthcare systems in developing countries negatively. The urgency with which countries have had to respond has diverted already scarce resources towards covid-related care at the expense of other essential healthcare. This has caused disruption to routine vaccinations and treatments and is storing up years of future problems as well as a potential reversal of hard-won gains in global health. The FCDO should show global leadership in its commitment to global health, as outlined in the Strategic Framework for ODA, through maintaining its existing commitments to routine immunisation programmes and other essential healthcare across developing countries. It should further tell us how it assesses the impact of covid-19 on healthcare and decides to mitigate it. Our interim findings report recommended that the Government should publish a multi-year, cross-departmental global health strategy, to map out how UK policy can deliver a strategic and integrated approach to strengthening global health. In the midst of a pandemic, this is needed more than ever, and we reiterate our previous recommendation. Furthermore, this global health strategy should set out how the UK intends to use levers at multilateral and bilateral levels to achieve its aims, how this ensures progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and how the strategy will reach the most marginalised and vulnerable communities. Whilst we commend the Government’s response to covid-19, we are concerned that several of the measures listed in the FCDO’s submission in October 2020—the £80 million commitment to the Global Financing Facility and the £400 million commitment to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative—pre-date the outbreak of covid-19 and ask the FCDO to provide us with an updated list, which sets out the Government’s funding for healthcare since the outbreak of covid-19.
Paragraph Reference:
36
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
The UK has played a leading role in the global health response. Our support aims to balance the demand of responding to direct health impacts of the pandemic whilst also maintaining the delivery of, and access to, affordable essential services for health, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. This is critical for ending preventable deaths of mothers, new-borns and children by 2030. To assess the impact of covid-19 on healthcare, FCDO commissions and synthesises the latest evidence from academia, development agencies and NGOs to help inform decision making. This includes monthly commissions for data on nutrition services, regular reviews of data on health service availability, utilisation and disruption, and regular updates of the latest evidence of the impact on sexual and reproductive health and rights. While the Government has no immediate plans to publish a global health strategy, we will continue to review our approach and consider how it should evolve in light of lessons from the pandemic and the outcomes from the Integrated Review. The Government remains committed to driving progress on global health, including through this year’s G7 Presidency; its commitments on ending preventable deaths of mothers, new-borns and children by 2030; leading the way in eradicating Ebola and malaria; and the Prime Minister’s five-point plan to strengthen global health security. Global health remains one of the UK’s priorities, focusing on supporting healthier and more resilient populations in developing countries and overcoming covid-19. The breakdown of 2020 spend on global health will be published this autumn in the UK Statistics on International Development Aid Spend final publication and the provisional 2020 UK Aid Spend will be published this spring.