ADB okays $450M in health care funding

THE Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $450-million loan for the Philippines in support of health care reforms.

Among others, the loan will help in expanding access to medicines and health care services, and sustaining Universal Health Care (UHC) coverage along with increasing funding, the Manila-based lender said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Build UHC Program (Subprogram 2) will help scale up government efforts to implement reforms under the UHC Act of 2019, the ADB said.

The reforms include sustainable UHC funding, the coordinated provision of high-quality health services and the compatibility of health information systems.

This new initiative extends previous ADB support under Subprogram 1 and technical assistance funded by the Japan Fund for Prosperous and Resilient Asia and the Pacific, approved in November 2021.

«The Build UHC Program is part of ADB's commitment to deliver long-term support to the country to ensure all Filipinos have equitable access to quality health services without exhausting their finances,» ADB health specialist Eduardo Banzon said.

«The program will also help ensure the reforms are responsive to gender-specific health issues and the impacts of climate change on people's health and well-being,» he added.

The ADB noted that the government had adopted an updated health financing strategy, a national medicine access policy and the National Health Data Repository framework.

The Green and Safe Health Facilities program was also implemented to make sure that public health facilities were disaster resilient, environmentally sustainable and gender responsive.

The number of primary care providers has also increased, the ADB said, and benefits under the National Health Insurance Program have been improved.

The government was said to have expanded health promotion in communities, workplaces and schools, designating barangay health workers as community-level health education and promotion officers.

«The government also initiated an annual monitoring of UHC outputs and introduced performance incentives for local government units,» the ADB said.