Article at a glance:

Building better partnerships for global health

• Deadly maladies such as HIV/AIDS and malaria beset much of the developing world, where a dearth of money, infrastructure, and political stability complicates treatment and prevention.
• Global health partnerships can harness the talents of the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to fight health problems by delivering much-needed money, awareness, and expertise.
• The partnerships, however, provide inadequate support for implementing programs, burden countries with duplicative processes, and communicate poorly with partners, sometimes with harmful consequences to a country's health care plans.
• Partnerships should give countries more say in decisions about treatments, collaborate with one another more effectively, and beef up their administrative capabilities.