Reorienting health aid to meet post-2015 global health challenges: a case study of Sweden as a donor

The international development community is transitioning from the era of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), ending in 2015, to the era of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which have a 2030 target. Global development assistance for health (DAH) increased substantially in the MDGs era, from US $10.8 billion in 2001 to $28.1 billion by 2012 (in 2010 US dollars), and it played a crucial role in tackling global challenges such as HIV/AIDS and malaria. In this paper, we describe the likely health challenges of the SDGs era and the types of international assistance that will be required to help tackle these challenges. We propose a new way of classifying DAH based on considering the functions that it will need to serve in order to address these post-2015 challenges. We apply this new classification to the current health aid spending of one donor, Sweden, as a case study. Based on our findings, we suggest ways in which Sweden’s DAH could be reoriented towards meeting the health challenges of the next two decades.