OU Pushes for Health System Strengthening

The OU was pleased to respond to a call from the House of Commons for expert submissions to the International Development Select Committee. The committee is conducting an inquiry into DFID's support for health system strengthening in low-income countries. In particular it is focusing on:

• the impact of weak health systems on the achievement of global health and development goals, and the extent to which poor health systems risk undermining the entire development effort
• the effectiveness of DFID's current approach.

The authors of the OU response, Maureen Mackintosh and Julius Mugwagwa, while welcoming DFID's support for health systems strengthening, drew on DPP and IKD's longstanding research into health systems in development contexts to make several recommendations, including:

• improved diagnosis of market structure and functioning in health systems, and support for system-wide policies to tackle damaging price-based competition
• more effective integration of DFID support for industrial innovation with health sector supply chain support, through closer working with locally based private sector suppliers and manufacturers' associations.

You can read more and follow the oral evidence sessions on the UK parliament website, or download the OU response.