Across low- and middle-income countries, public spending on health is constrained by rising debt service costs and short-term constraints on increasing domestic revenues. On top of this, development assistance for health is estimated to have declined by around 30% between 2023 and 2025 as major donors make cuts or divert spending to other priorities. Yet billions of people still lack access to essential health services and progress towards universal health coverage has slowed during the last decade.
The 2026 Public finance conference will be held in Nairobi, Kenya and online from 29-30 September. It will focus on how governments can address these pressures to do more with less. How can ministries of health make the case for health spending to ministries of finance and parliamentarians? How can health priorities be better incorporated into budgets? How can major drivers of health expenditure, including the health workforce and medicines, be better managed and allocated? How can public finance reforms integrate digital innovations? And what capabilities do ministries of health need to build to carry out these functions effectively?
To examine these questions, we will bring together finance and health officials, international organisations, researchers and practitioners committed to turning budgets into better health outcomes.