By: Kripa Sridhar
Edited By: Aakrith Harikumar
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group held their Annual 2024 Meetings between October 20 and October 24. As a guest of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, it was a privilege to attend the annual meetings and gain immense insight into the various projects that the World Bank is initiating and into the issues that the IMF is looking to tackle in the upcoming years. While several meetings commenced throughout the week, the panel that focused on global healthcare was pivotal. In a world where we discuss critical infrastructure regarding nations’ national debt, growing climate issues, and internal politics, it seems as though issues like primary healthcare for all take a backseat. When national spending starts to combat national debt or military spending, issues like climate or healthcare are seen as a luxury. However, is primary healthcare truly a luxury? How do you effectively lead a nation when citizens cannot survive curable ailments such as malaria or chickenpox? In today’s medical age, many vaccines can now prevent diseases considered deadly decades ago.
On Tuesday, October 24, the World Bank Group hosted a meeting titled “Delivering Quality, Affordable Health Services to 1.5 Billion People by 2030—Equitably, Efficiently and Effectively.” Headed by the World Bank Group, the panel included a World Bank representative, an advocate representing the Nigerian presidency, a World Health Organization representative, a Senior Director at World Vision International, and the Director of Programs for Pandemic Action Network. The running goal of the World Bank Group with this initiative is how to reach more people and ensure primary healthcare while addressing the financial hardships many face when accessing healthcare.
The main questions addressed during the panel were centered around achieving this ambitious goal of securing primary healthcare for 2.5 billion people by 2030. The panel emphasized the idea of a “roadmap.” This roadmap tries to understand the regions’ needs and priority reforms. Questions were related to financing focuses, partnership agendas, and the types of services needed in health reforms concerning regional needs. Throughout discussion and Q&A sessions, the panel could hear from each other and from different actors in the room who were integrated into this effort. Many spoke about how to better quicken this goal and make it possible, not just a dream. One common thread throughout the two-hour meeting was the need to connect the threads between international, national, and state-level organizations. For example, the Nigerian Presidency representative explained how Nigeria’s governance structure has created some leeway. Nigeria has its own offices to implement new healthcare directives, all of which work for federal ministries to integrate more sectoral plans. The Nigerian government makes an effort to develop a national insurance policy to address healthcare affordability throughout the country.
On an international level, World Health Organization representative Daniel Thornton explained the new reforms that the WHO has introduced which strengthen science through new divisions and shift resources to country offices to localize the healthcare front. Key reforms that the WHO emphasizes are financing, and aligning its agenda with the World Bank Group as an international organization.
By attending this meeting, one thing was clear: Affordable healthcare is achievable for 2.5 billion people if organizations on every level can coordinate their agendas. While financing, infrastructure, and reform policies are all very vital to the initiative run by the World Bank Group, none of those aspects will be executed if there is not a revamping of the collective action of various organizations, individuals, and structures that are crucial to the primary healthcare goal. Collective action between local, national, and transnational groups must be enforced and built to accomplish the World Bank Group’s ambitious goal of securing primary healthcare for 2.5 billion people by 2030. In a world that is still recovering after a global pandemic, these meetings were eye-opening. It signified how international organizations shall provide a reprieve after the years of COVID-19. However, the goal of the meeting was to explain the project itself and how the World Bank is behind on its target. Hearing from the Nigerian representative and other organizations such as the World Health Organization it was clear that there were ways to accelerate the project to better reach the World Bank’s goal of securing primary healthcare for 2.5 billion people by 2030. Coordination was seemingly the overarching theme of how to better equip the World Bank to do this. By building up the infrastructure at local, state, and national levels, international organizations can provide their aid through this project in a more focused way. Coordination webbed throughout all different levels of government effectively ensures that the goal is achieved and provided without falling through the cracks. Without primary healthcare, citizens suffer living in an age where curable diseases are still considered a death sentence due to the lack of infrastructure that makes basic healthcare unavailable. Primary healthcare should not be a luxury, but a right, no matter region, social status, or price.