The World Bank has a new 10-year health strategy

The World Bank has a new 10-year health strategy.1 Since its previous health strategy, developed in 1997, the global health landscape has been transformed. International spending on health has increased from about US$7 billion in 2000 to almost $14 billion in 2005. While the Bank used to be the pre-eminent international health-financing agency, spending about $1·5 billion a year on health, it now operates in a more crowded field, with established players, such as WHO, UNICEF, and bilateral donor agencies, and newer players such as the US President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the GAVI Alliance.
Unsurprisingly, the Bank has taken a step back to think about its role. In doing so it has prioritised strengthening of health systems, citing expertise in health financing; incentives for health workers; logistical, and financial management; governance of health systems; demand-side interventions, such as conditional cash transfers and reforms for patient choice; sector-wide strategic planning; health-service quality-control; epidemiological surveillance; and public-private collaboration. The Bank also seems intent on establishing itself as the lead global agency for health-systems policy-development, even suggesting that WHO and UNICEF should focus on the technical aspects of disease control and health-facility management.1/.../