“[H]umanitarian watchdog Development Initiatives outlines some of the needs, responses and funding trends” in humanitarian aid over the past decade in its 2010 Global Humanitarian Assistance (GHA) report, IRIN writes in an article that examines the organization’s findings.

According to the report, private funding is the “rising star” in humanitarian aid, IRIN reports. “NGO Medecines Sans Frontieres received US$845 million of private funding in 2009, making it equivalent to the fourth largest donor country.” Humanitarian assistance was “up US$3.2 billion in 2009 compared with 2006, despite an 11 percent drop in reported government aid in 2009; private contributions increased by 50 percent since 2006, reaching 4.1 billion,” according to IRIN.

The report also notes that the humanitarian response to conflict areas is a “priority. Some 71 percent of aid in 1999-2008 was spent in conflict-affected states,” including Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), IRIN writes.

“It is very hard to gauge to what degree aid meets needs as there is still no uniform, thorough, objective way of measuring needs, says the GHA,” the news service writes, noting that most assessments are kept “private.” The article also examines the report’s findings on aid to victims of the 2004 tsunami, Haiti’s earthquake and DRC’s ongoing conflict (7/27).

IRIN/PlusNews Maps Percent Of African Budgets Spent On Health

IRIN/PlusNews has mapped the percentage of national budgets in Africa “allocated to health against mortality rates of children younger than five years.” Countries tagged red, which represents governments that spend 6 percent or less on health, are Angola, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Eritrea, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Sudan. Liberia, Tanzania and Zambia each spend 15 percent or more on health, according to IRIN.

The map uses data from a report by Countdown to 2015, a “group monitoring maternal and child health.” The map also breaks down the percentage of HIV/AIDS related child deaths – the highest on the map is 49 percent in Swaziland – and “how deaths in young children match up against efforts to meet the Abuja targets” (7/28).