Weekly News Roundup
News, Events and Observations about Health Markets in the Developing World
Program News
Bangladeshi Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), which runs the CHMI-profiled Manoshi program, announced its goal to be completely self-financed by 2021! It went from 100% donor funding in 1990's to only 30% in 2011. Click here to read more.
Cola-Life is piloting the distribution of anti-diarrhea kits (ADKs) in bags and other forms of supply chains to maintain independence from Coca Cola. Cola-Life piggy-backs on the Coca-Cola distribution chain to get social products into the community shops that Coca-Cola gets to, however it may be that some retailers do not sell Coca-Cola. Hence Cola-Life is trying new ways to bundle and package the ADKs to be transported along with the different products without increasing the volume. Read about it here.
Bas Hoefman, the founder of Text To Change (TTC), was interviewed in a recent article of Ventures Africa about the experience and challenges the NGO had faced in introducing and executing m-health projects. TTC has led the way in using interactive text messaging for health in Africa especially in Uganda. It specializes in interactive and incentive based SMS programs, addressing a wide range of health issues including HIV/AIDS, malaria and reproductive health. So far it has implemented over 40 successful mHealth programs in 14 countries!
General News
Check out a new video released by the Transparency & Accountability Program (TAP) at the Results for Development Institute (R4D), the coordinating partner of CHMI, illustrating a new ICT to address health worker absenteeism. When patients arrive at a PHC and the doctor is absent, they can use their phones to text a central location which will record this data to allow the government to track and citizens to see which clinics are chronically understaffed.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently published an article about a Nigerian banker, Tony Elumelu, and his idea for “Africapitalism,” a business-led, African-run approach to spurring entrepreneurialism and fighting poverty. He started a foundation to finance non-profit work that supports economic growth. He joins a small but growing group of African philanthropists using their wealth to tackle current social problems. Read the full article here.
A new article in The Economist looks at the increasingly crucial roles of health care innovations in meeting health care needs especially in developing countries. As the demand for health care is rising faster than the supply of doctors in developing countries, innovative approaches for better allocation of resources, efficient targeting of tasks, and ICT seem to be providing effective alternatives to the traditional doctor-patient dynamic. These innovations have been lowering costs and improving the quality of care. Several CHMI-profiled programs such as Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital, LifeSpring Hospitals, and MedicallHome are given as examples of innovative models. To read the article, click here.