The recent two-day Caribbean Health Financing Forum, held in Washington, D.C., brought together the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) as part of the Alliance for Primary Health Care (A4PHC). The forum aimed to address the urgent need for stronger health financing in the Caribbean.
Distinguished representatives from health and finance ministries across the region, including those from the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, convened at the esteemed World Bank Headquarters for this significant gathering. The event provided a platform for stakeholders to discuss avenues for bolstering health financing in the Caribbean.
Dr. Rhonda Sealey-Thomas, PAHO Assistant Director, highlighted the Caribbean’s leadership in Primary Health Care while emphasizing the crucial requirement for comprehensive health financing strategies. She highlighted specific challenges, such as the region’s reliance on global tourism revenue, escalating climate change-induced natural disasters, and the disproportionate impact of external economic shocks.
A notable concern that surfaced during the forum was the low public health spending in the Caribbean, currently at 3.6% of GDP, coupled with high out-of-pocket expenses, which account for nearly 31% of current health spending. This situation places a significant financial strain on households, often resulting in catastrophic health expenditures and impoverishment.
Dr. Sealey-Thomas stressed the importance of undertaking fiscal space analysis, enhancing financial risk protection, and improving efficiency and coordination in health financing to attain resilient health systems anchored in Primary Health Care for the region. She outlined how these measures, along with domestic resource mobilization, could pave the way for sustainable health financing strategies in the Caribbean.
The Caribbean Health Financing Forum covered a diverse range of topics, including advancing health financing reforms, reversing declining financial protection for Universal Health Coverage (UHC), lessons learned from health insurance, and strategies for mobilizing, pooling, and allocating resources for UHC financing. Attendees also presented country-specific experiences, with a strong emphasis on strategic purchasing, data utilization, and driving reforms in health financing at the primary care level.
As the event drew to a close, Mary Lou Valdez, Deputy Director of PAHO, emphasized the critical need for improved production and analysis of information to identify individuals facing financial barriers to accessing health services and to comprehend the main drivers of out-of-pocket spending that may lead to financial hardship in Caribbean populations. She reiterated PAHO’s commitment to collaborating with all countries, in partnership with the World Bank and the IDB, to actively support the implementation of national strategies aimed at enhancing health and finance within each country.
An essential outcome of the discussions highlighted the urgent need for data generation, capacity building in health financing, and sharing experiences to progress health financing policies within the framework of universal health and strong primary health care-based resilient health systems in the Caribbean.
The Alliance for Primary Health Care in the Americas, a collaborative effort between PAHO, the IDB, and the World Bank, aims to ramp up investment, innovation, and policy implementation to transform health systems in the Americas, with a specific focus on primary health care.
Overall, the Caribbean Health Financing Forum served as a pivotal platform for fostering cooperation and charting a course of action to fortify health financing in the Caribbean, laying the groundwork for a healthier and more financially secure future for the region.