Abstract
Health sector has increasingly played a critical role in global trends of development assistance toward focusing human-centered development and poverty reduction, sharing common goals such as `Millennium Development Goals', and expanding sector-wide approaches and donor harmonization. Japan has contributed to the developing world as the top or leading donor over a decade, and has extensively committed itself to health-sector assistance. In particular, Japan has announced commitments to fighting some of the global health issues through the Global Issues Initiative on Population and AIDS, the Global Parasite Control for the 21st Century known as Hashimoto Initiative, and the Okinawa Infectious Diseases Initiative. However, to increase efficiency and effectiveness, and world's proper appreciation of Japan's development assistance for health, some challenges should be tackled, including priority settings in issues and approaches, more strategic collaboration/coordination with overseas and Japanese development partners, and human resources development and retention in Japan.
