Public-private partnerships to close healthcare gap in Africa

African and other developing nations can close the healthcare gap sooner than later through innovative public-private partnerships, according to a latest report released by the World Economic Fourm.

The ecosystem approach from the Araya scheme in Nigeria and six county initiatives in Kenya could be used as a blueprint for countries to leapfrog their health systems and make innovative transformations a reality.

The report, entitled Health Systems: Leapfrogging in Emerging Economies, notes that building sustainable health systems in emerging economies is one of the biggest challenges presently yet, following the path of established health systems in developed economies is not the answer.

The report shows that at current rates it would for example take Nigeria 300 years to achieve developed economies levels of doctor access.

However, case studies highlighted in the report reveal that programs in Africa, particularly in Nigeria and Kenya, can reverse the trend.

Nigeria's south-western Ogun State developed an innovative insurance scheme, which aims to provide healthcare coverage to more than 100,000 people by 2018, most of them women and children, and improve eHealth, sourcing of medical products, upgrading primary care technologies and other health services.

Known as the Araya scheme, it is financed by the Ogun State government, and supported by the World Bank, the AHME consortium of private companies and NGOs such as PharmAccess and the World Economic Forum.

"We are very proud and extremely thankful to our public and private partners for the impact they have achieved on the ground," Arnaud Bernaert Head of Global Health and Healthcare Industries, Member of the Executive Committee, World Economic Forum, said of the Nigerian scheme.

To effectively implement health innovations, according to the report, there is need for closer and more efficient cooperation between the public, private, and civil society sectors.

It says the concept of public-private partnerships will need to evolve from the traditional bilateral and transactional models to an ecosystem of partnerships, where the type of cooperation changes over time with sustainability as a key objective.

The authors argue that by successfully mobilizing and coordinating an ecosystem of large corporations, start-ups, NGOs, international and academic institutions, as well as health policy makers, there is an opportunity to transform health systems in emerging economies.

"For decades, public-private partnerships in healthcare relied on task outsourcing to some private players, an outdated approach which does not fit the requirements for a real transformation of health systems," said Arnaud Bernaert, head of Global Health and Healthcare Industries.

"We proposed a model that depends upon an ecosystem of partnerships, where a wide variety of stakeholders align to find innovative solutions to complex health care challenges and put in place the enablers needed for system transformation," said the report. Enditem