Since the Collapse of Somali Government in 1991, the Somali Health Sector has been supported by multiple partners including development partners, bilateral and multi-lateral donors, and International/National non-governmental organizations, among other stakeholders, with lots of fragmentation of planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Private Sector provides the largest health services to the population.

In 2013, with the support of Multi-donor supported programme called Joint Health and Nutrition Programme (JHNP), Somali Health Authorities from Somaliland, Puntland and South-Central Zones together with health sector partners formulized Health sector coordination architecture into three levels which was zonal health, nutrition, WASH sector coordination, National Health Sector Committee and Health Advisory board which worked very well until 2016, due to changes to political structure and the new emerged federal member states, the health sector coordination committee has been constrained.

In line to the National Development Plan (NPD 8), Federal Government of Somalia established coordination architecture in which social development (pillar 7) working group was functional with two sub-working groups; i) Health, Nutrition and WASH sub-working group chaired by the Ministry of Health and ii) Education, Youth and Employment sub-working group chaired by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Higher Education.

The National Development Plan (NDP 9) is following similar arrangement of coordination architecture with some adjustment, where Social development working group (Pillar 4) will be re-established with sub-working group arrangement.

On the other hand, New Opportunities arose, the Global Financing Facility (GFF) is a country-driven partnership that aims to accelerate efforts to end preventable maternal, new-born, child and adolescent deaths and improve the health and quality of life of women, adolescents and children. The GFF supports countries in developing a prioritized plan (the Investment Case) for the health sector that matches the resources available in the short term and supports countries in strengthening their health financing systems to achieve efficiencies and more sustainable domestic financing. The GFF promotes an integrated health system approach and combines external support, domestic financing and the private sector in a synergistic way.

The Federal Government of Somalia has signed a commitment letter to join countries supported by GFF and particularly committed areas of 1) government-led health sector development through multi-stakeholder country coordination platform led by nominated high level government focal point with support from GFF Secretariat, 2) develop an investment case which is a consensus around a set of high priority reforms to scaling up of core health and nutrition services to advance the country’s universal health coverage (UHC) agenda, 3) increasing domestic resource allocation to health, 4) ensuring equitable health services and financial protection, 5) strengthening and using data for decision making and 6) willingness to commit IDA/IBRD resources for health.

The Ministry of Health and Human Services of Federal Republic of Somalia, together with Ministry of Finance – FGS, Ministries of Health at Federal Member States, Representation from UN Organizations and Development Partners, Civil Society Organization and Private Sector had a workshop in Addis Ababa – Ethiopia in late 2019 and agreed to re-establish an in-country coordination platform for health, nutrition and WASH sectors. Two coordination meetings took place ever since.

The Terms of Reference for the Somali Health Sector Coordination Committee has been revised to ensure its alignment to the national development plan coordination architecture and feeding into the social development (Pillar 4) working group.