External Funding Operations to Health Systems Dashboard

The External Funding Operations to Health Systems Dashboard is an initiative of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO / WHO) for tracking funding operations from the main financial institutions and donors to the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The scope of the database is the loans and grants approved since the formal start of the pandemic in March 2020. The operations registered in the database include the financing of health and non-health activities.

  1. Distribution of commitments: information on the amounts committed by a country, the financial mechanisms, and the funders.
  2. Country profiles: information on macroeconomic indicators and the purposes of committed funds.
  3. COVID-19 vaccination programs: information on allocations for implementing immunization programs and the financing components.
  4. Inventory of funding operations: detailed information on each operation and access to data sources.

PAHO’s strategy for building resilient health systems acknowledges that increasing public investment in health to at least 6% of GDP, eliminating direct payments as a barrier to access, and prioritizing the first level of care are more important than ever (1). Therefore, as the specialized international public health agency, PAHO/WHO welcomes the efforts made in this direction by governments and the international community in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic but sees it essential to monitor the availability of funds to make the financing sustainable and predictable, and its allocation by purpose in alignment with the Universal Health objectives and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2030.

Under this project, PAHO / WHO started collecting, analyzing, and systematizing funding operations from the leading international financial institutions and donors for Latin American and Caribbean countries. The information about the sources, levels, and structure of funds can serve as a tool to identify the resources available to build sustainable, resilient health systems as the priorities of countries and funders.

(1)  Pan American Health Organization. Strategy for building resilient health systems and post-Covid-19 pandemic recovery to sustain and protect public health gains. [Internet]. 59th Directing Council of PAHO; 73rd session of the WHO regional committee for the Americas. The virtual session, 20-24 September 2021; Washington, DC, Washington, DC: PAHO; 2021 (Document CD59/11). Available from: https://www.paho.org/en/documents/cd5911-strategy-building-resilient-he…

The data in this dashboard have been produced and processed from official sources believed to be reliable. PAHO does not commit to the information being up to date, as the disclosure of details about the approvals relies on the data sources.

The classifications of operations by country, type of mechanism and institution, amounts, and year are based on data provided "as is." The distribution of funds by main purpose and program area is part of the work done by PAHO to track the focus of the funding operations.

Highlights
  • International financial institutions and donors have approved more than 1,690 funding operations for Latin America and the Caribbean countries since 2020.
  • More than 350 funding operations are directed to support health systems and the COVID-19 health response.
  • Funding for health and other sectors reached US$308,581.6 million by December 2022.
  • From the above, the approved funds for health systems account for US$ 8,741.8 million (2.8% of the total) by December 2022.
  • From the approved health systems funds, allocations related to COVID-19 reached US$ 5,867.7 million in 2022.
  • The funds allocated for COVID-19 vaccination programs reached US$ 2,930.4 million by December 2022, accounting for 33.5% of the total.
  • The amount of approved funds for health seems to have lost steam in 2022. The approved operations only accounted for US$1,557.4 million, a decrease of 64.6% compared to the approvals from the year 2021.

More information