The rhetoric of sector-wide approaches for health development

The past decade has witnessed an increasing concerns over the effectiveness of project-based development assistance and the promotion of sector-wide approaches (SWAps) to health as a means to increase donor collaboration, consolidate local management of resources and undertake the policy and systems reform necessary to achieve a greater impact on health issues. The concept has gained the support of both the World Bank and the World Health Organisation, as well as key bilateral donors, and dominates current initiatives in development assistance for health. This paper examines the proposal of SWAps as rhetoric, and seeks to understand how that rhetoric functions, despite the variable application of its constituent elements and the range of contexts in which it operates.