The Lancet
Jan 30, 2010 Volume 375  Number 9712  Pages 347 – 432
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/issue/current

Health Policy
Financing of health systems to achieve the health Millennium Development Goals in low-income countries
Robert Fryatt, Anne Mills, Anders Nordstrom

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Concern that underfunded and weak health systems are impeding the achievement of the health Millennium Development Goals in low-income countries led to the creation of a High Level Taskforce on Innovative International Financing for Health Systems in September, 2008. This report summarises the key challenges faced by the Taskforce and its Working Groups. Working Group 1 examined the constraints to scaling up and costs. Challenges included: difficulty in generalisation because of scarce and context-specific health-systems knowledge; no consensus for optimum service-delivery approaches, leading to wide cost differences; no consensus for health benefits; difficulty in quantification of likely efficiency gains; and challenges in quantification of the financing gap owing to uncertainties about financial commitments for health.