Spain
Partner in global health
For 3 years, the Spanish National Hip Fracture Registry has been collecting comprehensive data on the management of elderly patients with hip fractures and is already making a difference to quality of care.
Content was last updated 15 February 2023.
Spain and WHO: longtime partners in the quest for a healthier world
Spain’s support is helping WHO strengthen health systems around the world, stop polio, malaria and neglected tropical diseases, build better emergency medical teams, respond to pandemics, and more. A Member State of WHO since May 1951, Spain shares the Organization’s vision of building a world in which all people have access to affordable, good-quality health services. Spain has put health at the center of its new development bill, approved in May 2022.
Spain has bolstered the fight against COVID-19 with large commitments of funds and vaccine donations while providing targeted support for countries with fragile health systems in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Concerned about the world’s readiness for future pandemics, Spain is supporting a process to develop an international convention or other instrument to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.
Spain is a member of the High-Level Coalition and Energy, which is working to make a healthier world by expanding access to clean, sustainable energy.
Spain is also a world leader in the field of organ and tissue transplantation and is working with WHO to increase the availability of transplants; these procedures offer enormous potential for saving and improving lives but are out of reach of many who need them, especially in lower-income countries.
Learn more
Photo: ©Pool Moncloa/Fernando Calvo
Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a 7 July 2022 meeting in Geneva. The leaders discussed expanding cooperation
on women’s sexual and reproductive health, the effects of climate change on health and other issues.
Contributions
Spain is among WHO's top ten contributors of thematic funding for 2020-2021. WHO allocates these semi-flexible funds in a way that fulfills the shared priorities of the Organization and the donor.
Spain contributed nearly US$ 50 million to WHO for the 2020-21 biennium. That amount included US$ 25.4 million in voluntary contributions, a six-fold increase over the previous biennium.
Spain has also been increasing the flexibility of its contributions to WHO. More than 80% of its 2020-21 contribution was flexible (not earmarked). For the biennium 2020-21, Spain provided US$ 7.5 million in support to WHO’s COVID-19 response, the greater part of which was flexible. In December 2020, Spain provided an un-earmarked additional contribution of €3.2 million to the WHO’s strategic preparedness and response plan for COVID-19.
Other contributions from Spain supported the WHO Health Emergencies Programme (WHE), the Emergency Medical Teams initiative, and International Health Regulations (IHR), a global framework to curtail the international spread of disease.
Spain’s financial support to WHO is provided through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECID), and the Ministry of Health. WHO also received support from autonomous communities in
Spain, in particular the Generalitat de Catalonia.
Spain’s top global health priorities
- Universal health coverage and health systems strengthening
- Pandemic response and emergency medical teams
- Organ and tissue transplantation
- Malaria and other tropical diseases
- Polio
Learn more
Working for stronger health systems, a key to universal health coverage
Photo: ©WHO/Víctor Sánchez
Spain has been a strong supporter of COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in Latin America. Above: In March 2021, health personnel, midwives and other priority groups received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Campur, a municipality in the department of Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.
Universal health coverage means that everyone has ready access to the full spectrum of quality health services for all stages of life, without suffering financial hardship. Those services run from health promotion, to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care.
Spain’s Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) is funding work to bring innovation to the way health care is organized and delivered, so that more people can receive high-quality, efficiently managed services.
AECID is also funding the development of a WHO Academy course for providers of essential and emergency surgery in lower-resource settings. The course is designed to build the knowledge and skills of physicians to expand access to children’s surgery, safe anaesthesia, care for trauma, abdominal emergencies, obstetric emergencies and more; today, in low- and middle-income countries, nine out of ten people cannot access even the most basic surgical services.
Spain is also a member of UHC2030, a multi-stakeholder platform that unites diverse voices and perspectives to work toward universal health coverage.
Learn more
Pandemic response and emergency medical teams
As of June 2022, Spain had pledged US$ 207.3 million to the ACT-Accelerator, a global collaboration to quickly develop, produce and fairly distribute COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments.
A portion of Spain’s contribution to WHO’s COVID-19 response was earmarked to help Latin American countries cope with the pandemic. Spain has also committed to sharing 74 million vaccine doses through COVAX, nearly 40 million of which had already been delivered to countries as of early July 2022. Spain has also cooperated with the European Union to provide oxygen and ventilators to India.
Spain is a co-sponsor of the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP). In 2021, the Spanish National Research Council shared its COVID-19 serological test technology with C-TAP so that it could be used in developing countries. By sharing data, knowhow and intellectual property, Spain has helped increase production of COVID-19 diagnostics.
Improving the quality of emergency medical teams around the world is high on Spain’s list of global health priorities. Since 2014, Spain has focused its contributions to WHO emergencies on the Emergency Medical Teams (EMT) initiative. The initiative is working to improve the timeliness and quality of health services provided by national and international emergency medical teams.
Learn more
Photo: ©WHO/Darek Zalewski
Improving the quality of emergency medical teams around the world is high on Spain’s list of global health priorities. Above: An Emergency medical team from Poland in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, Tajikistan.
Organ and tissue transplantation
Organ donation and transplantation is in great demand the world over but is especially scarce in lower-income countries in Africa and southeast Asia. According to estimates, the transplants performed cover only 10% of patients in need. As a consequence, some patients resort to illegal and unethical means to obtain a transplant organ.
To save lives, improve patients’ quality of life and combat organ trafficking, the Ministry of Health of Spain is providing funds and expertise to WHO to help countries develop sustainable, self-sufficient organ transplant systems.
The Ministry is also an ally of WHO in advocating for tissue donation and transplantation, and in raising awareness of the many medical uses of tissues, among them, restoring eyesight and mobility.
Through its Organización Nacional de Trasplantes (ONT), Spain runs the Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation, the world’s most comprehensive source of data on the subject. In 2008, WHO designated the ONT as a collaborating center on donation and transplantation. The center contributes to data collection in the field, providing evidence on worldwide practices.
Learn more
Photo: © PAHO
Less than 10 percent of transplants that are needed are performed, according to estimates.
Malaria and other tropical diseases
Photo: ©WHO/Fernando G. Revilla
In Palmarito, Bolivia, a boy sizes up a cartoon Chagas beetle, vector for the parasite that causes Chagas disease.
Spain contributes to the WHO-based Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, a global scientific collaboration that combats diseases of poverty. An important aspect of the Special Programme’s work is fighting neglected tropical
diseases that endanger more than a billion people a year, guided by a WHO 10-year roadmap.
In 2021, WHO designated the second collaborating center in Spain to combat leishmaniasis, a skin disease carried by sandflies and linked to poverty, forms of which can cause disfigurement and death.
Through its support for WHO, Spain is helping sub-Saharan Africa get back on track in its fight against malaria in the aftermath of COVID-19. WHO’s global technical strategy for malaria 2016-2030 sets out targets for preventing the disease, to be met by introducing innovations and using tools more efficiently and fairly. WHO’s updated recommendations for preventing malaria include scaling up malaria chemoprevention – which involves giving monthly doses of antimalarial drugs to small children during peak malaria-transmission season – and deploying the new malaria vaccine, which was approved by WHO in 2021. WHO is helping countries tailor their health strategies to make the best use of malaria-prevention tools.
Learn more
Polio
Spain is a longtime ally in the fight against polio, having contributed to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) since its inception in 1988. Back then, polio paralyzed more than 1000 children every day. Today, with more than 2.5 billion children immunized, polio cases have dropped by 99 percent and wild poliovirus still circulates in only two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the fight is now concentrated.
Learn more
Photo: ©WHO/Chad
Arancha González Laya, Spanish Foreign Minister (2020-2021) administers the polio vaccine to a newborn in N’Djaména, Chad. Ms. González Laya served as a Gender Champion for Polio Eradication, as has
her successor, José Manuel Albares.
WHO collaborating centres in Spain
Photo: ©PAHO
Displaced people from Venezuela receive vaccinations at their camp in Vichada, Colombia.
Spain hosts ten collaborating centres, working on vaccine safety, malaria, palliative care, mental health services, leishmaniasis, eHealth, fascioliasis, primary health care, donation and transplantation, and tobacco control. The centres are:
The School of Public Health of Andalucia, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Hospital Clínico Universitario de Santiago de Compostela, Ramon y Cajal University Hospital, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Universidad de Valencia, Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Organización Nacional de Trasplantes (ONT) and University of Navarra.
Learn more