Healthy Partnerships for Improved Healthcare
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Health challenges in Africa are huge. In order to meet these challenges, the public and private sectors must work hand in hand to carry the heavy load that African health systems are asked to support.
That is the finding of a new IFC-World Bank report, “Healthy Partnerships: How Governments Can Engage the Private Sector to Improve Health in Africa”, which stresses the importance of the public and private sectors joining together to address the continent's growing healthcare needs.
The report is the first to measure the relationship between the public and private healthcare sectors in 45 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa. It describes the current engagement, or lack thereof, between the public and private health sectors and gives information, aimed at both parties, on what improvements can be made and how.
A joint IFC-World Bank team travelled to all 45 countries to interview a range of experts from both the public and private sectors, including representatives from ministries of health, regulators of private health sector providers, private healthcare providers, and associations, in addition to independent experts.
Key recommendations from the report include:
To governments
- In the short-term: eliminate harmful interventions; seek dialogue with private providers; understand the existing private providers
- In the longer term: build balanced engagement; discuss quality with private providers; maintain a functional registry of who is doing what
To the private health sector
- Form credible, representative organizations; then seek dialogue
- Encourage members to formalize; join provider networks; build capacity in clinical practice and in business management
Click here to read how IFC supported a successful public-private health partnership initiative in Lesotho.
For more information contact:
Kimberlee Brown
Communications Officer
Nairobi, Kenya
Email: kbrown@ifc.org
