Global health partnerships and country health systems: the case of Cambodia

Mark Pearson, Kent Buse, Sok Pun and Clare Dickinson, July 2009

Cambodia has been extraordinarily successful in attracting funding from global health partnerships especially from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and the GAVI Alliance. There are signs that this funding has contributed to strengthening the country’s health system by supporting well run programmes that have delivered results.

Yet, global health partnerships have also contributed towards a growing misalignment between donor support and stated government priorities and have had negative impacts which may have served to undermine broader health systems development efforts.

Based on a study carried out in January 2008, this paper makes recommendations on how global partnerships can better align their efforts with current and evolving approaches on a range of health systems issues.

The paper is one of the 15 new studies submitted for the report of the WHO Maximizing Positive Synergies Collaborative Group: An assessment of interactions between global health initiatives and country health systems (Lancet vol 373, 20 June 2009).