Taken from the official translation of the German Sustainable Development Strategy
The data for the indicator come from special analyses of the relevant budget headings and commitment appropriations from the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Federal Ministry of Health and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Programmes are taken into account in the analyses if, by dint of their objectives, they fall directly under the heading of pandemic prevention and response or if they are primarily intended to enhance relevant capabilities in the field of health care. The programmes cover matters such as the pandemic prevention and response functions of the World Health Organization (WHO), sanitation, One Health (a holistic approach that recognises the interconnection between human, animal and environmental health), vaccination infrastructure and research and development, both at home and abroad, in so far as the R&D findings and innovations also benefit the countries of the Global South. Additionally, programmes launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have also been taken into account. The latter include WHO programmes and activities, humanitarian aid, vaccine development, crisis response and emergency assistance and loans to help health services in countries of the Global South to respond to the crisis. By definition, expenditure and pledges made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are excluded from the indicator and shown separately.
As regards the figures, it should be noted that it is not possible to draw hard and fast lines between the content of programmes, since the indicator field is closely interlinked with numerous other areas of the health system. The indicator therefore takes account of a range of programmes, such as Germany’s contribution to the WHO to support its emergency programme and to provide flexible initial funding for crisis response measures through the Contingency Fund for Emergencies, support for a vaccination programme for the reduction of child mortality in the East African Community, improvement of drinking water supply and sanitation in Burkina Faso and a biosecurity cooperation programme. Besides the thematic prioritisation, it should also be noted that some of the programmes are focused on general reinforcement of global coordination and organisational capacity and therefore do not exclusively benefit countries of the Global South.
Nor can a precise line be drawn between preventive and reactive measures. Developing preventive capacity may, for example, enhance responsiveness to a pandemic situation, while reactive measures may contribute to capacity-building in the long term. To avoid a statistical outlier resulting from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, these expenditure items and pledges are not part of the indicators but are shown separately in the chart.
The amounts of expenditure and pledges that are displayed, moreover, say nothing about the success of the programmes. The indicator represents Germany’s monetary contribution to pandemic prevention and response. A more extensive assessment would be needed to gauge the impact of that contribution. In view of the foregoing provisos, therefore, the recorded figures are not by any means a full reflection of the German expenditure and pledges that directly or indirectly influence the pandemic prevention and response effort.
Between the years 2015 and 2020, expenditure and pledges for pandemic prevention and response rose from EUR 137.9 million to EUR 353.1 million (provisional figure). This represents an average annual increase of EUR 43.1 million over those last five years. If this trend continued, the objective of increasing Germany’s contribution substantially from 2019 to 2030 would be achieved. The chart also clearly shows the upsurge of EUR 635.2 million in expenditure and pledges in 2020 to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
