Public Private Partnerships Could Be The Cure Needed To Widen Access To Healthcare In Sub-Saharan Africa

As the global community moves towards achieving the targets within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region faces unique challenges in delivering health services to its population, especially communities at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

Challenges, including climate-induced catastrophes such as flooding and the associated destruction of transport infrastructure, have also dogged supply chains. To address these challenges, much is being done through forging and nurturing partnerships between corporate, public, and civil society to ensure synergy in efforts towards improving healthcare services in SSA.

The goodwill by governments has also enabled pharmaceutical companies to take up an active role in ensuring SSA as a region is not excluded from accessing medicines and therapeutics available in developed countries through partnerships with like-minded organisations.

However, over the past 20 years, addressing the major, unresolved global health challenges has evolved from purely donation-based programs towards models with sustainable social impact. The drive to create expanded access for patients is also increasingly anchored on systematic public-private partnerships (PPPs) that create public health awareness and build capacity among healthcare providers in Kenya.

As a case in point, the Familia Nawiri initiative spearheaded by Christian Health Association of Kenya (CHAK) hospitals and Novartis has put in place measures to manage diabetes, hypertension, heart failure, breast cancer, epilepsy, eye diseases, sickle cell disease (SCD) and malaria.

This approach has also gained ground in Senegal, where CARDIO4Cities initiative has made significant inroads with an aim of increasing the early detection of cardiovascular diseases as well as putting in place new clinical guidelines and data systems. Within 18 months of the project's duration, we have seen impressive results. The percentage of patients with controlled blood pressure on medication tripled from 6.7% to 19.4%, while data captured grew from 470 to 6056 patients. This data will enable healthcare providers to provide more in-depth insights into a patient's health and treatment, putting them in a better position to deliver high-quality care.

Partnerships in capacity building among healthcare workers have also helped widen access to healthcare. As a case in point, the Familia Nawiri initiative in Uganda has partnered with the Uganda Catholic Medical Bureau (UCMB) and the Protestant Medical Bureau (UPMB) in Uganda to build the capacity of health workers as well as create awareness about NCDs. This will go a long way in strengthening health systems to tackle malaria, diabetes, hypertension, heart failure, breast cancer, SCD, epilepsy, and eye diseases.

In Ethiopia, a similar partnership with the Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET) has strengthened NCD care across 60 medical facilities by training, mentoring, and supervising healthcare professionals and identifying key issues relating to treatment accessibility for NCD patients. This has reached over 500,000 patients across Ethiopia.

In Kenya, Malawi, and Nigeria, partnership with the Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network (EPN) has helped to advance work in reducing the environmental impact of antibiotics, improving access to anti-infectives, building capacity of healthcare workers on the rational use of anti-microbials, and aligning channels for research and health information sharing.

In the ophthalmology space, Novartis’ partnership with Sight Life, a Non-Governmental Organization, has helped create awareness about the importance of early screening in facilitating timely patient diagnosis and capacity building for primary eye health providers in rural areas. The other intervention is facilitating the integration of eye health into primary care nationally. This helps prevent the incidence of avoidable blindness, considering that up to 80 per cent of blindness is preventable and treatable.

Purpose-driven partnerships such as these are fundamental to the overall success of players in the healthcare sector. PPPs can create a common understanding around critical health needs, harness different strengths, and cultivate shared accountability between partners.

Global actors involved in improving and extending people’s lives have a great responsibility and an even greater opportunity to lead the world in creating positive social change and embracing societal impact as a core business objective. The ultimate aim is to ensure that no one is left behind.

The writer is Racey Muchilwa, the Head of Novartis in sub-Saharan Africa.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and do not in any way represent the position of TUKO.co.ke.