Health financing and fiscal tools to support the national response to epidemiological transition

The demographic and epidemiological transitions in South Africa and globally encompass substantially increasing trends of chronic diseases including cancers and mental health. There are a range of health financing and fiscal interventions that are required to strengthen the national response to chronic diseases. These include addressing financing gaps and supporting new investment cases, escalating preventative interventions, reforms to health taxes, amendments to existing conditional grants to support integrated chronic disease platforms, strengthening health technology assessment for new interventions and improving chronic medicine access through new models of chronic medicine dispensing.