Optimizing global health initiatives to strengthen national health systems

摘要

Health systems seek to achieve overall health improvement through provision of promotional, preventive, curative and rehabilitative health services. Health systems operate at and across national, district, community and individual levels. Governments have the responsibility to strengthen their health systems. Health system strengthening is defined as building capacity in critical components of health systems to achieve more equitable and sustained improvements across health services and health outcomes. Global Health Initiatives (GHIs) are typically programmes targeted at specific diseases and intended to bring additional resources to the health efforts of countries. The purpose of this article is to highlight the opportunities and challenges that exist in effectively optimizing GHI resources to strengthen national health systems and actions that can take advantage of these opportunities.