Center for Global Development blog responds to NPR report on health in Afghanistan

This post in the Center for Global Development's (CGD) "Global Health Policy" blog, Amanda Glassman, director of global health policy and a research fellow at CGD, responds to an NPR Morning Edition report on USAID's work in Afghanistan, recapping the progress the agency has made in improving health care in the country. However, she says that while Alex Their, who oversees USAID projects in Afghanistan and was interviewed in the report, stated it was a "great sign" that 75 percent of health spending in the country was out of pocket, "[h]igh levels of out-of-pocket (OOP) spending actually signal poor health financing strategy, with high risks of further impoverishing the extremely poor households that live in Afghanistan" (12/22).