Financing Alliance for Health (FAH)

Context

SSA countries have the most severe shortage of health workers in the world. Less than 30% of countries in the region can meet the target of 2.3 health workers per 1,000 people, set by the WHO. Despite a proven return-on-investment on community health workers, few countries currently prioritize Community Health (CH) systems. Insufficient, unaligned, and inaccessible international and domestic funding results in many countries’ community health programs remaining fragmented, trapped in the pilot and sub-scale phases, and not always delivering a maximum return on investment. Given the nature of CH, governments’ role in funding and delivery solutions, particularly in the long-term, cannot be overstated.

Solution

FAH draws on private sector expertise, coupled with knowledge of how governments function, to support in developing community healthcare financing strategies, financial structuring, and accessing various financing opportunities. Some examples of their work include:

• Helping health ministries develop compelling investment cases for finance ministries and other funders
• Highlighting the benefits of new financing mechanisms and co-developing new sources of financing e.g. blended finance for community health
• Focusing the spotlight on effective community health systems by sharing case studies, co-publishing reports on the impact of CH systems, and sharing best practice/success cases
• Supporting governments on stakeholder engagement and coordination on funding community health

Impact depth

Over 80% of African countries lacking elaborate community health strategies could benefit from FAH’s capacity building and capital mobilization services. FAH contributes to:

• Empowered and upskilled health ministries: FAH enables ministries to refine their healthcare costing strategies, develop impactful investment cases for community healthcare funders, upskills the teams in budgeting, costing analyses, and accountability
• Increased access to capital: FAH helps governments to unlock additional capital channelled to community health systems for training, supervision, equipment, and salaries for the healthcare workers