For years, Wenhui Mao and a group of researchers at Duke University have been curious about how moments of donor transition — whether increasing or withdrawing aid — impact the health systems of the countries that receive the funds.
Their earlier research has shown that “local governments may not have the capacity to immediately take over from the donor,” leading to short-term gaps, as well as the loss of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.
Now they have trained their sights on whether multilateral and bilateral donors follow similar patterns when withdrawing health-related official development assistance, or ODA. Taking Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, as their example, they analyzed how 17 bilateral donors behaved when Gavi withdrew its assistance because a country had reached its threshold for transition.