Aid funding watchdog found in 2018 that government should improve sharing of knowledge on epidemics
The scale of threats from emerging infectious diseases and the risks to the UK are growing—and the government must not be complacent, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact said in 2018.
It called on the government to improve and raise awareness of its response strategy in order to provide a coordinated response with charities and companies.
Here we republish the article about that report in full.
Share lessons from global health crises, review says
The government has acted swiftly to tackle global pandemics and drug resistance, but it needs to share the lessons acquired more broadly, according to an aid funding watchdog.
The Independent Commission for Aid Impact has concluded that the UK’s use of aid funding to address global health threats is effective, but the government should improve the sharing and dissemination of relevant knowledge.
“With some exceptions, mechanisms to evaluate programmes and to share learning are inconsistent or underdeveloped,” its review, published on 31 January, said. It highlighted that the lessons learnt from ongoing programmes were not being disseminated: “In the country programmes [such as Sierra Leone and Burma] we reviewed, we saw little evidence that lessons were shared more widely.”
Overall the government was given a green-amber score for its aid effort to tackle global health threats since the Ebola outbreak. The ICAI found that good progress had been made in developing a response to the potential outbreak of infectious diseases and drug resistance.
One of the most widely praised government-sponsored programmes is the effort to find vaccines for emerging diseases including Zika and Lassa fever. A 2016 report by the Wellcome Trust found that research to develop a vaccine against the Ebola virus, part funded by the UK, had made “tremendous progress”.
But Richard Gledhill, the ICAI commissioner who led the review, advised the government against being complacent, saying, “The scale of these threats, and the risks to the UK, are growing.”
To improve its response strategy the government should put more emphasis on strengthening national health systems, broaden its set of priorities and improve collaboration with external players, the review recommended. It warned that the government was not doing enough to raise awareness of its strategy and therefore risked losing opportunities to add value by coordinating with charities and private companies.
The government should also ensure that the Department for International Development has sufficient capacity to influence activities in priority countries and coordinate UK global health programmes, the review said.
This is the latest in a series of ICAI reviews on the government’s policies. Its conclusions will be discussed at a hearing of the House of Commons International Development Committee.