About me
Gerald Manthalu is a health economist and health systems specialist with more than 20 years of experience in health sector planning, health financing, public financial management, health systems reform and policy development, with extensive experience in Malawi and at the global health level.
He currently serves as Head of the Public Financial Management and Lusaka Agenda Division at Africa CDC, where he works on strengthening public financial management and domestic health financing while supporting the implementation of the Lusaka Agenda and broader reforms of the global health architecture.
Gerald has held senior leadership positions in Malawi’s Ministry of Health, including Director of Planning and Policy Development and Deputy Director for Planning and Budgeting. In these roles, he has led or contributed to major reforms including One Plan, One Budget, One Report; integrated primary health care; health benefits package design; direct health facility financing; health workforce planning; resource allocation; and health sector sustainability reforms. He has also worked extensively with governments, Global Health Initiatives, development partners and technical agencies to improve the coherence, efficiency and sustainability of health systems.
Gerald was closely involved in the development of the Lusaka Agenda, serving as co-chair of the Commitments Taskforce of the Future of Global Health Initiatives and subsequently contributing to efforts to operationalize the Agenda. He has also served on the UHC2030 Steering Committee and the Africa Health Agenda International Conference Commission on the State of Universal Health Coverage in Africa.
His academic background is in health economics, with a PhD from the University of Aberdeen and an MSc from the University of York. His research and publications have focused on health systems, universal health coverage, health financing, resource allocation, economic evaluation, efficiency, equity and health benefits packages in low- and middle-income countries.
Batumeyo is where Gerald writes about the issues he encounters at the intersection of health policy, economics, institutions and development—particularly the difficult questions of how countries can build stronger, more equitable and financially sustainable health systems, and how global health cooperation can work better for countries and their populations.
Batumeyo is Gerald's home village. It is a place where life is simpler, but the questions are no less profound. Here, far from the conference rooms where people debate Global Health Initiatives, financing architectures, supply chains and health system reforms, the health system is experienced in much simpler terms: Is there a health worker at the health centre? Will someone see me when I arrive? Will the medicine I am prescribed actually be there?
And so, Batumeyo is also a place from which to think about these seemingly complicated questions. Gerald imagines his reflections as small messages cast into the stream at the edge of the village—thoughts gathered from years of working among economists, policymakers, health workers, donors and global health institutions, released into the current and carried downstream towards the city, where they might find their way into the hands and minds of those who shape policy.
Perhaps, in the end, the stream carries the questions back in the other direction: from the village to the city, from the people who experience the health system to those who design it. For beneath all the frameworks, strategies, budgets and institutional arrangements, there remains a simple test of whether a health system is working: when someone is sick and reaches for care, is there a health worker there to care for them, and is there something there to help them?
