Principles of the Global Campaign for the Health MDGsGlobal campaign for the health MDGs

• Countries set their own priorities
  Countries decide their own health priorities, and create national health plans to achieve them. Aid agencies should co-ordinate their work to fit and support these plans.
• Agencies give aid without adding to countries’ administrative burdens
  Aid agencies shouldn’t add to the amount of reporting, information collecting and administration that governments and health workers have to do. In fact, this burden should be lightened. We should avoid creating new institutions that make the way aid is given (the “aid architecture”) more complex.
• Everyone ensures that money is well spent
  More attention should be given to results, so that the money spent is linked to the results achieved – in work on women’s and children’s health, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. This will ensure that neglected issues and groups get the attention they need.
• Agencies help to develop the country’s whole health system
  Aid agencies should work in ways that strengthen the country’s health system as a whole. That means increasing the flexibility of funding so countries can build up local facilities, increase the number of health professionals and ensure that enough health workers and medicines are in place where they are needed. It also means making and keeping long-term commitments.
• All partners work in a transparent and accountable way
  Openness benefits everyone: the voters whose taxes are spent on development work, the contributors to charities, and the people in the countries being helped. They all have a vested interest in knowing that money is being spent – and healthcare provided – in a fair, open, honest and effective way. Independent evaluation processes will be critical to this principle and ensure effective use of resources.

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