Not All Aid Flows Are Created Equal: An analysis of the allocation of foreign aid to combat infectious diseases
Dayton, Shane W.; Wilson, Sven
Abstract
The developing world is plagued by infectious diseases. Controlling infectious diseases will reduce suffering and promote economic development. Foreign aid donors fund projects for developing countries to help combat infectious diseases. However, foreign aid is not always allocated based on need. Often, it is given for political and strategic reasons1. With respect to aid for the health sector, the research has focused primarily on the global-disease level and not on the country-disease level. The limited research on the latter suggests that donors are responding to need2. The focus of my research is to examine the allocation of foreign aid specifically targeted at infectious diseases at the country-level to evaluate whether donors respond to countries’ level of need (as measured by disease burden).