Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene July-August 2015 Vol. 10 No.4 | Page 34

Water & Health
How will global health financing change
post-MDGs?
By Jenny Lei Ravelo

The increases in spending for these three health problems
are largely due to the MDGs, which brought the world’s
attention to these global challenges — and the reason why
advocates of neglected health issues are pushing for these
concerns to be included in the post-2015 agenda.

New Dangers Found In Produced Water
By Sara Jerome

A laboratory technician takes a patient’s blood sample to use for HIV testing at the
Chancho health center in Ethiopia. The bulk of global health financing since 2000
was spent on efforts to curb the spread of HIV and make treatment for the virus
accessible to everyone who needs it.

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent since
2000 to tackle some of the world’s biggest health
problems.
The bulk of global health financing was spent on efforts
to curb the spread of HIV and make treatment for the
virus accessible to everyone who needs it. From $1.4
billion at the start of the Millennium Development Goals,
spending on HIV and AIDS shot up to more than $10
billion annually from 2010 to the present, peaking at
$11.14 billion in 2013, according to the latest global health
financing data released by the Institute for Health Metrics
and Evaluation.
Reducing under-5 mortality came in second. While
nowhere near the levels spent on HIV and AIDS, funding
to decrease child deaths has grown 8.3 percent annually
since 2000. Spending to improve maternal health also grew,
though pales in comparison at just $3 billion in 2014.

Produced water
appears to contain
two harmful
chemicals that
researchers previously
did not know about,
according to a new
study.

Image credit: “Oil Well,” the great 8 © “Harmful levels of
2012, used under an Attribution 2.0 ammonium and iodide

have now been found in wastewater from conventional
oil and gas production plus the more controversial
practice of hydraulic fracturing, known as frackin