The Rockefeller Health Plan

Healthcare is on everyone's lips in the United States And if it's up to the Rockefeller Foundation, it will be the hot topic in a bevy of other countries before long, too.

So says $100 million that the foundation is putting toward funding the Transforming Health Systems Initiative, which aims to strengthen health systems in Africa and Asia. The initiative, slated to run for five years, will work to make health systems in various countries more accessible, efficient and financially viable and to bring the idea of universal health coverage into the mainstream in these places.

The first target countries are Ghana, Rwanda and Vietnam, where the foundation will offer resources to assist governments in managing health care systems, even going so far as to help implement eHealth systems to reach low-income populations. Successes and pitfalls encountered in these first forays will inform the foundation's expansion of the initiative.

The company's statement on the project made it clear why the initiative is vital: "In developing countries with inefficient health systems, the majority of health spending is paid out-of-pocket, making care unaffordable for most people. A recent report from the World Health Organization estimated that as a result of inadequate health systems, 125 million people spend nearly half their annual income in health care, and catastrophic health expenditures send 25 million families back into poverty every year."

Thank goodness there are generous givers like the Rockefeller Foundation to tackle this problem head-on. Now, what's "say ahhh" in Vietnamese?