Countries are increasing smart and scaled investments in high-impact interventions for women, children and adolescents’ health and nutrition

WASHINGTON, DC – The Global Financing Facility in Support of Every Woman Every Child (GFF) today released its 2017-2018 annual report. The report shows progress in 16 countries[1] over the last three years where GFF-supported countries have invested more resources in high-impact interventions to save and improve the lives of women, children and adolescents.

“The Global Financing Facility is the catalyst for encouraging governments to invest their money in the health and nutrition of their people,” said Professor Isaac F. Adewole, Minister of Health of Nigeria. “No development, or meaningful development, can occur if governments don’t invest their own money.”

Highlights from the GFF annual report include:

  • Millions more women, children and adolescents in countries are now accessing quality health and nutrition services, with support of the GFF partnership, its co-financiers and private sector partners.  
  • GFF country Investment Cases have succeeded in aligning contributions from more than 15  bilateral donors, and 10 countries engaged the private sector.
  • Nearly all of the initial 16 GFF-supported countries are pioneering health financing reforms to strengthen domestic resource mobilization for the health and nutrition of mothers, children and adolescents.
  • Since its inception in 2015, GFF-supported countries have translated the support of partners around Investment Cases to achieve rapid improvements in results among those with the greatest needs:
  • In Tanzania health care is improving for those living below the poverty line: Outpatient care has risen from 2.5% to 14% in 18 months, and  the number of high-performing (at least 3-star-rated) health facilities has risen from 1% to 22%.
  • In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in less than one year, thousands more women and children in 14  provinces accessed essential services; vaccination rates for children (DTP, HepB, HIB) are up 25% and assisted deliveries are up 14%.
  • Cameroon is increasing its health budget allocation to the primary and secondary levels from a baseline of 8% in 2017 to 20% by 2020. Between quarters one and four in 2017, in facilities using performance-based financing, the number of family planning visits doubled to 25,000, and the number of antenatal care visits doubled to 100,000.
  • Nigeria is scaling a basic minimum package of health services for all Nigerians, and is investing more of its domestic resources in the health and nutrition of women, children and adolescents. This is expected to mobilize about US$150 million in new money per year for primary health care strengthening and service delivery.

The Annual Report includes 16 country profiles with data on GFF core indicators, including country investment case and geographic prioritization, baseline data on health and nutrition outcomes, and core intervention coverage data, as well as a detailed review of progress and results in Cameroon, DRC and Tanzania, and an update from Nigeria on its resource mobilization efforts. Although the GFF is working in 27 countries, 11 countries[2] are not profiled in the report because they joined the GFF in the last eight months.

“The first three years of the GFF have been a time to establish our partnership, provide proof of concept, and define and start to generate results,” said Dr. Mariam Claeson, Director of the GFF. “Our aim is to expand our support to all 50 countries with the greatest need by 2023. With the GFF partnership’s support, countries can get closer to eliminating preventable deaths of women, children and adolescents by 2030, and get on track to sustainably financing the health and nutrition of their people.”

The GFF was founded in 2015 as the scale of the challenge faced by the global health community was underscored, with just 15 out of 137 countries achieving Millennium Development Goal 5, to reduce maternal mortality, and an unfinished health and nutrition agenda of women, children and adolescents. That same year, the GFF was launched by the World Bank, United Nations, governments of Canada and Norway, and other partners, to help countries transform how they finance the health and nutrition of women, children and adolescents to reach sustainable impact at scale. The GFF focuses on the 50 countries with the greatest women, children and adolescent health and nutrition needs.

On November 6, 2018, the Governments of Norway and Burkina Faso, the World Bank Group, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will co-host a GFF replenishment event in Oslo, Norway. The Government of Norway, one of the initiators of and largest investors in the GFF, will also host a conference focused on development finance on November 5, 2018, the day before the GFF replenishment event. To extend its support to all 50 countries with the greatest need, accelerate progress and contribute to end the 5.2 million annual deaths of women, children and adolescents, the GFF needs to raise US$2 billion for the 2018-23 period. 

As of June 30, 2018, US$452 million in GFF Trust Fund financing was linked to US$3.3 billion in International Development Association/International Bank for Reconstruction and Development financing for the health and nutrition of women, children and adolescents.

The annual report, summary document and an animation on domestic resource mobilization are available here: https://www.globalfinancingfacility.org/global-financing-facility-annual-report-2017-2018

[1]   Bangladesh, the Republic of Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, the United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda, and Vietnam.

[2] Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali and Rwanda.