The general elections held on the 20th of December and the forming of a new government has led Salud por Derecho to shape a Roadmap for Spanish Development Policy in Health for the 2011-2015 Legislature. This document includes policies and actions which the new government in addition to its financial contributions, should implement to make its development policy in global health effective.
The following is a summary of key areas in which the new Government should take action stressed in the Roadmap document:
- Funding for Development and Global Health must be prioritized, 15% of Official Development Aid (ODA) must be devoted to health, and in turn 0.5% of the total for health expenditure must be put to R+D in global health.
- R+D Policy in Global Health. Spain should not only continue to support the international research initiatives that it has backed so far, but should also support R+D for tuberculosis. Moreover, Spain should go beyond the financial support and play a more active political and scientific role including fostering the new European Horizon 2020 programme’s dedicating more resources more flexibly to research on poverty related diseases.
- The Fight against HIV/AIDS. The new executive should recover both its political and its financial commitment to sustainably fight this pandemic. It should also become involved in defining new policies and models enabling not only the costs of drugs to be reduced, but also an effective, affordable, preventive AIDS vaccine to be obtained.
- Aid Effectiveness. Health cooperation should base its investment on each instrument according to the objectives and desired results, and rigorous results-based analysis should be performed. Furthermore, impact, results obtained, and the value for money should all be taken into account.
- Structure and Governance. The Secretariat of State for Development should be kept independent of other Secretariats under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, and functions and responsibilities should be properly divided between the Spanish Agency for International Development Policy (Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo – AECID) and the Directorate General for Policy Planning and Evaluation (Dirección General de Planificación y Evaluación de Políticas de Desarrollo – DGPOLDE). A solution must be found for Spain’s lack of representativeness and influence in multilateral instruments working on health.
- Instruments. There must be a process of deep, candid consideration of both the bilateral and the multilateral instrumental framework, based on clear and coherent criteria to guide decision-making.
- Policy Coherence should be ensured, amongst other means, by Spain taking on board the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel or by facilitating developing countries wishing to do so, and where Spain may have influence, to freely avail themselves of their right to use the flexibility in the Trade related aspects of the Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement in order to obtain a reduction on the price they pay for drugs.
