Issue Deep Dive: Italy/Global Health

ODA Spending

How much ODA does Italy allocate to global health?

In 2023, Italy contributed US$400 million ODA to global health, or 7% of its ODA. Italy was the 12^th largest OECD DAC donor to global health in 2022 in absolute terms.

How is Italian global health ODA changing?

As with the rest of its ODA, Italy delivers most of its health ODA multilaterally. Italy hosted the first replenishment of the Global Fund in Rome in 2005 and has steadily increased its contributions since.

How does Italy allocate global health ODA?

Bilateral Spending

Italy spent 21% of total health ODA bilaterally in 2023. This included 4% in the form of earmarked funding to multilaterals, which is counted as bilateral ODA.

Multilateral Spending and Commitments

Italy spent 78% of total health ODA, multilaterally in 2023 as core contributions to multilateral organizations.

Top multilateral recipients of Italy's health ODA were the EUI, the Global Fund, and the IDA.

Funding & Policy Outlook

What is the current government's outlook on global health ODA?

In January 2024, Italy hosted the Africa-Italy Summit to launch the pilot programs of Italy's flagship foreign policy initiative, the Mattei Plan for Africa, which identifies health as a priority area of intervention. Objectives include strengthening health systems, improving accessibility and quality of primary MNCH services, strengthening local capacities for the management, training, and employment of health personnel, research, and digitalization, and developing strategies and systems to prevent and contain health threats, particularly pandemics and natural disasters.

As part of Italy's G7 presidency in 2024, the C7 has set up seven working groups, including a dedicated group for global health.

Under Italian leadership, G20 countries pledged to redistribute US$100 billion of the US$650 billion in SDRs returned in 2021 to LICs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Italy and other G20 countries announced that they would channel 20% of their SDR allocation to vulnerable countries.

Key Bodies


Global health R&D is also important to addressing many of the global health challenges that disproportionately affect the world’s most disadvantaged people. For more information on how donor countries are supporting global health R&D across three main areas — 1) EIDs; 2) PRNDs; and 3) SRH — read the excellent G-Finder reports and explore the interactive data portal created by Policy Cures Research. Not all funding mentioned in these analyses qualifies as ODA.

Global health R&D is also important to addressing many of the global health challenges that disproportionately affect the world’s most disadvantaged people. For more information on how donor countries are supporting global health R&D across three main areas — 1) EIDs; 2) PRNDs; and 3) SRH — read the excellent G-Finder reports and explore the interactive data portal created by Policy Cures Research. Not all funding mentioned in these analyses qualifies as ODA.