A high-level roundtable on Building Private Equity and Private Capital Markets in Africa met on 8 May 2013 to explore the promise and obstacles facing private capital investments in Africa. The report of this meeting highlights a discussion on the growth of private equity markets in Africa given rapid urbanisation and a growing middle-class, but questions whether the growth of Africa’s private equity will be based on a model that benefits local people.
Public-Private Mix
Hope for financing Africa's Development through private equity
UNECA: 9 May 2013
Hospitals' response to increasing autonomy and market forces: Evidence from four countries
McPake B, Hanson K: World Institute for Development Research (WIDER), 2006
The policy of hospital autonomy is contingent on the idea that market forces can discipline hospitals and so improve their performance. This article contests that idea from two perspectives. There is scarce evidence to assess the validity of the market forces model or of either conflicting model. The operation of health sector reform is multi-faceted, time lagged and beset by inter-relationships between multiple variables. Research funding is usually small scale and haphazard. This paper seeks to draw together evidence across four countries (the UK, Zambia, Indonesia and Colombia) where evidence of hospital performance in the wake of reform is relatively robust, in an attempt to identify patterns of response to reform.
Household Storage of Pharmaceuticals, Sources and Dispensing Practices in Drug Stores and Ordinary Retail Shops in Rural Areas of Kibaha District, Tanzania
Nsimba SE and Jande MB: The East and Central African Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences 9 (3): 74-80
A cross sectional study was conducted in rural areas of Kibaha district within the Coastal region of Tanzania to assess knowledge on dosage, storage, expiry and dispensing practices of antimalarial drugs among households, drug stores and ordinary shops. The majority of drug store (53 %) and ordinary retail shop (75 %) sellers did not dispense correct doses of antimalarials due to low literacy and lack of dosage guidelines or package inserts. In order to reduce incidences of drug poisoning due to over-dosage or drug resistance due to under dosage, there is need to educate both consumers and dispensers on correct dosage regimens through mass media such as radio, health education programs, television, posters, leaflets and newspapers.
How public private partnership will work in Africa
Anyanwu-Ikimba A, 19 July 2007
The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was founded on the principle of public-private partnership. It was created with the belief that without the combined efforts of government, civil society and the private sector, the world could not hope to halt the spread of the world's infectious disease. This speech examines some of the contributions made by the private sector in this regard.
Human rights guidelines for pharmaceutical companies in relation to access to medicines: The sexual and reproductive health context
Khosla R and Hunt P: University Of Essex, 3 March 2009
In this briefing, the authors consider the responsibilities of pharmaceutical companies for enhancing access to medicines in the context of sexual and reproductive health. They first examine the issue of access to medicine in the context of both HIV/AIDS and the human papilloma virus (HPV), highlighting the intersection with the fundamental rights to sexual and reproductive health. Having provided this context, the authors outline the responsibilities of States to ensure that medicines are available, accessible, culturally acceptable, and of good quality. However, they stress that the pharmaceutical sector has an indispensable role to play in relation to the right to health and access to medicines. The responsibility should be shared between the pharmaceutical industry and global and national governing bodies.
IFC to push private health care in Africa
Bank Information Center, 18 January 2008
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank, announced last month that it would coordinate some $1 billion in equity investments and loans to finance private sector health provision in sub-Saharan Africa. The program was explicitly linked to the results of an IFC study, financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which found that the private sector already provides about half of the health care in the region, and that impoverished people are just as likely as the better-off to use private providers.
Impact of Public-Private Partnerships: addressing access to pharmaceuticals
The UK Department for International Development (DFID) funded the Initiative on Public Private Partnerships for Health (IPPPH) to conduct a pilot study in Uganda to assess the health and health systems impact of public private partnerships (PPPs) for improving access to pharmaceuticals in relation to leprosy, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, sleeping sickness, and HIV/AIDS. The specific remit was to examine issues of ownership, integration, coordination, implementation and impact, with a particular focus on the unique strengths and problems of these access PPPs as distinct from other comparable programmes where drugs are competitively procured.
Implications of dual practice for universal health coverage
McPake B, Russo G, Hipgrave D, Hort K, Campbell J: Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2016;94:142-146
Over the last five years, universal health coverage (UHC) has become an agreed goal of global health policy and planning initiatives. However, scholars and health policy-makers have noted that attaining this goal will require a sufficient number of prepared and motivated health workers. The World Health Organization (WHO) is developing a global strategy on human resources for health. A consultation has concluded that progress towards UHC will require integrated, people-centred health services, a motivated health workforce and adequate financing from domestic and other sources. While the importance of human resources in UHC and the SDG agenda has been recognized, the extent and impact of health workers’ dual practice – that is, concurrent clinical practice in public and private sectors – has not received much attention. However, given the pervasiveness of dual practice and the growing prominence of the private sector in the provision of health services worldwide, its dynamics and impact on the attainment of UHC should not be ignored. Failure to understand why, how and to what extent health workers engage in dual practice may compromise attempts to regulate it and undermine progress. This paper presents dual practice examples, focusing on UHC-associated policy relevance of the available evidence, especially in low- and middle-income countries. It presents regulatory options in a range of contexts and future research needs.
Improved government capacity needed for effective public-private partnerships
This document, from the Institute for Health Sector Development, examines a range of approaches to strengthening public-private sector partnerships in order to scale up affordable and quality-assured health services. The document summarises and assesses the evidence base for the impact of private sector interventions on the health of the poor and on the wider health systems. This includes both the supply side (contracting, social franchising and social marketing) and the demand side (vouchers, micro-credit and insurance schemes). This resource also includes four case studies involving Nicaragua, Cambodia, Pakistan and Tanzania.
Improving effectiveness and outcomes for the poor in health, nutrition and population
World Bank
The World Bank Group’s support for health, nutrition, and population (HNP) has been sustained since 1997—totaling $17 billion in country-level support by the World Bank and $873 million in private health and pharmaceutical investments by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) through mid-2008. This report evaluates the efficacy of the Bank Group’s direct support for HNP to developing countries since 1997 and draws lessons to help improve the effectiveness of this support. The report presents findings that The Bank Group now funds a smaller share of global support for health, nutrition, and population than it did a decade ago, but its support remains significant; About two-thirds of the Bank’s HNP projects show satisfactory outcomes, but a third do not; the accountability of Bank Group investments for demonstrating results for the poor has been weak; the Bank Group has an important role in helping countries to improve the efficiency of health systems and the potential for improving HNP outcomes through actions by non-health sectors is great, but incentives to deliver them are weak. Adding HNP objectives to Bank projects in other sectors, such as water supply and sanitation, raises the incentive to deliver health benefits. For the Bank Group to achieve its objectives of improving health sector performance and HNP outcomes among the poor, the report indicates that it needs to act in five areas: Intensify efforts to improve the performance of the World Bank portfolio; Renew the commitment to delivering results for the poor, including greater attention to reducing high fertility and malnutrition;
Build its own capacity to help countries to make health systems more efficient; Enhance the contribution of other sectors to HNP outcomes; Boost evaluation to implement the results agenda and improve governance.