Covid-19 // Response
“At the outset of every crisis, it’s critical not only to rely on lessons learned and relearned but to discern lessons that need to be unlearned.”
– Paul Farmer, M.D., Ph.D.
Key Principles on COVID-19 Response in Resource-Poor Settings
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It is critical to link the emergency response to COVID-19 to efforts to strengthen health systems and all social services.
We should aspire to invest in national institutions to build local capacity (both public and private). Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, we saw hundreds of millions of dollars invested in temporary facilities and short-term contracts while the network of public hospitals and schools across the country remained under-equipped and under-resourced.
In the two years after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, less than 10% of the $6.4 billion disbursed from bilateral and multilateral funders went to Haitian institutions. Similar trends can be found in other post crisis situations: For example, Liberia only received 3% of its official development assistance (ODA) through national systems prior to the Ebola outbreak.
When ODA is invested in the public sector during emergency responses clear development gains are evident. For example, beginning in 1998 and 1999, while Rwanda was in the midst of recovery from a genocide that killed an estimated 20 percent of the country’s population, the Rwandan government set into motion policies that would strengthen national institutions and lead to substantial social and economic progress. Rwanda’s Vision 2020 Strategy for Equitable Social and Economic Development emphasized health as a pillar of the national cross-sector approach to reducing poverty by achieving universal access to health care.
In 2023 the SII will launch the Covid-19 Tracking Initiative. The goal of the Covid-19 Tracking Initiative is to identify bilateral and multilateral pledges, commitments and disbursements toward the COVID-19 response in Africa using the same methodology the SII team has used for tracking aid to Haiti (post 2008 hurricanes, post 2010 earthquake and cholera outbreak) and for the Ebola response in West Africa while the SII team was at the United Nations.
This tracking initiative is designed from the perspective of recipient governments. Our methodology includes the following components:
- A focus on new global bilateral and multilateral funding toward the COVID-19 response in Africa.
- Data from both humanitarian as well as recovery funding.
- Modalities used by donors (budget support, funding toward ministries, funding for international NGOs, multilaterals, national NGOs).
- Emphasis on whether donor funding is aligned with national plans for COVID-19 response.
- Identification of first level recipients (i.e. If funding from a bilateral donor was disbursed to international NGOs, the data will reveal which NGOs received funding, how much funding was allocated, etc.).
Once the SII team has obtained all the data it will analyze it in an effort to:
a) Obtain a global view of funding available for COVID-19 response in Africa.
b) Identify how donors are disbursing their funds with a view to understand if the majority of funds are being disbursed toward national or international counterparts.
c) Identify major gaps in donor funding toward national recovery plans.
The data will be updated on a regular basis.