The Challenge
Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world with 77.8 percent of its mostly rural population living in absolute poverty.1 It has the wolrd's fourth highest rate of chronic malnutrition, with 47 percent of all children 0-5 years of age suffering from stunting. Close to 60 percent of the population is estimated to be extremely poor based on the minimum food intake methodology. This means that close to 13 million Malagasy people live on resources that do not allow them access to enough daily food to sustain themselves and their families. Achieving sustainable outcomes is a challenge that will require addressing the critical determinants of nutrition that span multiple sectors.
The GFF Partnership Response
The GFF partnership is supporting the government’s commitment in strengthening alignment with partners across programs and geographic areas to improve health and nutrition outcomes. Through the country’s investment case, the GFF supports efforts to increase resources to frontline providers through budget decentralization and distribution of qualified workers in underserved areas, it also focuses on increasing demand for high impact services among vulnerable populations, improving access to financial protection mechanisms, strengthening service delivery networks and improving the national civil registration and vital statistics strategic plan.
Progress
Madagascar’s investment case, which is almost finalized, is aligned with the ongoing preparation of the country’s Health Financing Strategy and the new Health Development Strategy. The Investment Case will outline priority regions and interventions requiring specific funding and include a resource mapping and a Monitoring and Evaluation Framework. The GFF Secretariat will provide technical assistance in monitoring and evaluation, including a resource mapping of the National Health Development Strategy and an update of the resource mapping of the investment case.
1The poverty rate for 2015, living on US$ 1.90 (2011 PPP), see Macro Poverty Outlook for Madagascar April 2016, The World Bank.