Tracking the flow of health aid from BRICS countries

After a decade of rapid increases, the flow of development assistance for health from traditional donors has stagnated in recent years. At the same time, emerging economies such as Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) are playing increasingly important roles in global health, including being donors of international health aid. In 2010, these five countries had estimated foreign assistance budgets of 400-1200, 427, 680, 3900 and 143 million US dollars, respectively. These estimates were, however, pieced together from ad hoc reports and characterized by substantial levels of uncertainty. They have also not been disaggregated by health-related activities. Although there have been attempts to quantify aid flows from each BRICS country, these have tended to be ad hoc, piecemeal and often complicated by the large numbers of agencies involved in foreign assistance. As BRICS take on a larger and larger global role in the health sector and economic development, it is imperative that there are commensurate increases in the availability of their data on international aid.