Today, one of the most important international conferences of 2015 begins. Decision makers from around the world are meeting in Addis Ababa for the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD3) to decide how we will finance development for the next 15 years. It’s a watershed moment for financing all areas of development and we’re going to be right in the middle of it ensuring that finance for health is top of the agenda! Later today, at an official UN side event during FFD3, we are launching our new report: “Who Pays for Progress? The Role of Domestic Resource Mobilisation and Development Assistance in Financing Health. A Case Study from Kenya” 
Who Pays for Progress? focuses on Kenya’s reclassification from a low-income country (LIC) to a lower-middle-income country (LMIC) exploring in particular the implications on health financing of the reclassification. Moving towards universal healthcare (UHC) is an ambition recognised in Kenya’s constitution and the report explores ways in which finance could be increased to achieve this goal. It is joint report from ACTION partners and allies, KANCO and the World AIDS Campaign International. Our research in Kenya has shown:
- The health sector is considerably underfinanced and heavily dependent on ODA, currently relying on donors for 45% of financing for health.
- Kenya’s graduation to LMIC status will impact the medium and long term financing of health from multilateral donors, such as Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Accordingly, it is important that Kenya starts planning now to ensure progress which has been made is not lost.
- Through increasing domestic resource mobilisation (DRM) it is possible and realistic for Kenya to increase its health budget which would allow important progress towards UHC.
The report makes important recommendations for donor governments and Kenya on both the importance and genuine opportunities to increase financing for health. These are lessons which we believe will be useful for other countries. If you are at the conference, please do join us between 18:15pm – 17:45, Monday 13th July, Jupiter Hotel for the launch and look out for tweets from @resultsuk @LauraMAKerr and @owstonlewis If you would like any further information on the report or the launch, please contact [email protected] or [email protected]