Tracking development assistance for health and for COVID-19 : a review of development assistance, government, out-of-pocket, and other private spending on health for 204 countries and territories, 1990-2050

Background The rapid spread of COVID-19 renewed the focus on how health systems across the globe are financed, especially during public health emergencies. Development assistance is an important source of health financing in many low-income countries, yet little is known about how much of this funding was disbursed for COVID-19. We aimed to put development assistance for health for COVID-19 in the context of broader trends in global health financing, and to estimate total health spending from 1995 to 2050 and development assistance for COVID-19 in 2020. Methods We estimated domestic health spending and development assistance for health to generate total health-sector spending estimates for 204 countries and territories. We leveraged data from the WHO Global Health Expenditure Database to produce estimates of domestic health spending. To generate estimates for development assistance for health, we relied on project-level disbursement data from the major international development agencies' online databases and annual financial statements and reports for information on income sources. To adjust our estimates for 2020 to include disbursements related to COVID-19, we extracted project data on commitments and disbursements from a broader set of databases (because not all of the data sources used to estimate the historical series extend to 2020), including the UN Office of Humanitarian Assistance Financial Tracking Service and the International Aid Transparency Initiative. We reported all the historic and future spending estimates in inflation-adjusted 2020 US$, 2020 US$ per capita, purchasing-power parity-adjusted US$per capita, and as a proportion of gross domestic product. We used various models to generate future health spending to 2050. Findings In 2019, health spending globally reached$8. 8 trillion (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 8.7-8.8) or $1132 (1119-1143) per person. Spending on health varied within and across income groups and geographical regions. Of this total,$40.4 billion (0.5%, 95% UI 0.5-0.5) was development assistance for health provided to low-income and middle-income countries, which made up 24.6% (UI 24.0-25.1) of total spending in low-income countries. We estimate that $54.8 billion in development assistance for health was disbursed in 2020. Of this,$13.7 billion was targeted toward the COVID-19 health response. $12.3 billion was newly committed and$1.4 billion was repurposed from existing health projects. $3.1 billion (22.4$2.4 billion (17.9%) was for supply chain and logistics. Only $714.4 million (7.7$1519 (1448-1591) per person in 2050, although spending across countries is expected to remain varied. Interpretation Global health spending is expected to continue to grow, but remain unequally distributed between countries. We estimate that development organisations substantially increased the amount of development assistance for health provided in 2020. Continued efforts are needed to raise sufficient resources to mitigate the pandemic for the most vulnerable, and to help curtail the pandemic for all. Copyright (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.Peer reviewe

Highly-parallelized simulation of a pixelated LArTPC on a GPU

The rapid development of general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is allowing the implementation of highly-parallelized Monte Carlo simulation chains for particle physics experiments. This technique is particularly suitable for the simulation of a pixelated charge readout for time projection chambers, given the large number of channels that this technology employs. Here we present the first implementation of a full microphysical simulator of a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) equipped with light readout and pixelated charge readout, developed for the DUNE Near Detector. The software is implemented with an end-to-end set of GPU-optimized algorithms. The algorithms have been written in Python and translated into CUDA kernels using Numba, a just-in-time compiler for a subset of Python and NumPy instructions. The GPU implementation achieves a speed up of four orders of magnitude compared with the equivalent CPU version. The simulation of the current induced on 10^3 pixels takes around 1 ms on the GPU, compared with approximately 10 s on the CPU. The results of the simulation are compared against data from a pixel-readout LArTPC prototype

Vitrification demonstration with surrogate Oak Ridge Reservation K-25 B and C pond sludge

Surrogate Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) K-25 B&C Pond sludge was vitrified in a pilot-scale EnVit Co melter operated by Clemson University at the DOE/Industrial Center for Vitrification Research Center. This demonstration was performed for the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) in support of a Department of Energy (DOE) - Office of Technology Development (OTD) Technical Task Plan. The intent of the demonstration was to determine the feasibility of vitrifying actual K-25 B&C Pond sludge in an EnVitCo type melter. B&C Pond sludge is a mixed waste consisting primarily of various amounts of Ca, Fe, and Si, with Ni and U as the principal hazardous and radioactive components. The demonstration was successfully completed and homogeneous, durable glass was produced. Characterization of the glass product, as well as details of the demonstration, will be discussed

The effect of compositional parameters on the TCLP and PCT durability of environmental glasses

The relationship between glass composition and the chemical durability of environmental waste glass is very important for both the development of glass formulations and the prediction of glass durability for process control. The development of such a model is extremely difficult for several reasons. Firstly, chemical durability is dependent upon the type of leach test employed; the leach tests themselves being only crude approximations of actual environmental conditions or long term behavior. Secondly, devitrification or crystallinity can also play a major role in durability, but is much more difficult to quantify. Lastly, the development of any one model for all glass types is impractical because of the wide variety of wastestreams, the heterogeneity of the wastestreams, and the large variety of components within each wastestream. Several ongoing efforts have been directed toward this goal, but as yet, no model has been proven acceptable