The ability of health organizations in developing countries to expand access to quality services depends in large part on organizational and human capacity. Capacity building includes professional development of staff, as well as efforts to create working environments conducive to high levels of performance. The current study evaluated an approach to public-private partnership where corporate volunteers give technical assistance to improve organizational and staff performance. From 2003 to 2005, the Pfizer Global Health Fellows program sent 72 employees to work with organizations in 19 countries. This evaluation was designed to assess program impact.
Public-Private Mix
Public-private partnerships to build human capacity in low income countries: findings from the Pfizer program
Vian T, Richards SC, McCoy K, Connelly P, Feeley F: Human Resources for Health 5:8
Strengthening the Role of the Private Sector in Expanding Health Coverage in Africa
Osewe P, World Bank, November 2006
This paper describes the context of health care provision in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), analyses current mechanisms for public-private partnerships (PPP), and discusses emerging issues in strengthening partnerships to expand health coverage.
Regulating private health insurance to serve the public interest: policy issues for developing countries
Sekhri N, Savedoff W: The International journal of health planning and management 21(4): 357-392
Private health insurance plays a large and increasing role around the world. This paper reviews international experiences and shows that private health insurance is significant in countries with widely different income levels and health system structures. It contrasts trends in private health insurance expansion across regions and highlights countries with particularly important experiences of private coverage. It then discusses the regulatory approaches and policies that can structure private health insurance markets in ways that mobilize resources for health care, promote financial risk protection, protect consumers and reduce inequities. The paper argues that policy makers need to confront the role that private health insurance will play in their health systems and regulate the sector appropriately so that it serves public goals of universal coverage and equity.
Sharing the burden of TB/HIV? Costs and financing of public–private partnerships for tuberculosis treatment in South Africa
Sinanovic E, Kumaranayake L: Tropical Medicine & International Health 11(9): 1466-1474
The objective of this study was to explore the economic costs and sources of financing for different public–private partnership (PPP) arrangements to tuberculosis (TB) provision involving both workplace and non-profit private providers in South Africa. The financing required for the different models from the perspective of the provincial TB programme, provider, and the patient are considered.
Trade Unions and reform of public utilities: International perspective
Lobina E, Hall D: Public Services International Research Unit, 2006
Privatisation has been promoted throughout the world for the last 20 years. The advantages are supposed to be increased efficiency, lower prices, greater investment, and greater dynamism than public ownership. It has been seen as a central policy element in transforming former communist states into market economies. It has been promoted wordwide by international institutions including the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD, and by multinational companies. The EU is in principle neutral on privatisation, but in practice encourages PPPs. Privatisation has been made especially attractive because of economic policies aimed at reducing the borrowing of governments at national and municipal level. This dociment discusses futher the impact of reform on industry, workers in health and trade unions.
A Public-Private Partnership for Sustainable Malaria Prevention
USAID, 14 November 2006
In 1999, the U.S. Agency for International Development launched the NetMark, in partnership with the Academy for Educational Development, to reduce the human cost caused by malaria. Since its launch, NetMark has developed partnerships with 37 African and 9 international commercial partners. NetMark's mission is to reduce malaria cases and deaths in Africa by increasing the availability, affordability and use of insecticide-treated bednets (ITN) through partnerships with commercial net and insecticide manufacturers, their African distributors, ministries of health, and NGOs. To accomplish this goal, NetMark works through public-private partnership to achieve both short and long-term public health impact. NetMark's model, based on efficient and effective delivery of ITNs, could easily be applied to other areas of malaria prevention.
Lessons Learned from a Study of the Impact on Health Services of Public-Private Partnership for Transport in the Eastern Cape
Health Systems Trust, 6 December 2006
Adequate and appropriate vehicles are essential for health service delivery. These are required for transport and transfer of patients from community to health facilities and between levels of health care delivery of essential equipment, medicines and other supplies to point of service delivery transport of health workers for supervisory visits, to attend meetings and training sessions and for administrative purposes. A transport management system that is efficiently and cost effectively run is essential to ensure availability of vehicles for health service delivery when required.
Public, Private Sector Leaders to Energise Anti-Malaria Efforts
McConnell K: USInfo, 12 December 2006
When leaders of governments, international organisations, corporations, nongovernmental organisations and faith-based groups came together on 14 December 14 in Washington, they jump started an ambitious public-private effort to save lives from the preventable and treatable mosquito-borne disease of malaria.
The Private Sector and Development in Africa – Challenges and Opportunities
Janneh A: UN Under Secretary General, November 2006
According to the UN Under-Secretary General, the private sector in Africa, although still in its infancy and not as organised as in other parts of the world, is expanding at a very fast rate, is contributing to growth and poverty reduction and that the state, by expanding economic space, has been central to this development. However, there is much that remains to be done both by the state and the private sector to realise the full possibilities of the sector’s contribution to African development.
Can working with the private sector improve access of the poor to quality health services?
Hanson K: World Institute for Development Research (WIDER), 2006
In recent years there has been increasing interest in the role played by the private sector in providing health services in low- and middle-income countries. Many countries have a vibrant and growing private sector, which is perceived by some to respond to the failures of the public sector to provide affordable, accessible, convenient and high quality services. There has been little investigation, however, of the extent to which interventions can be successful in expanding access to those who are difficult to reach and to provide services that are 'genuinely pro-poor'. This chapter offers a systematic review of the literature on the equity impact of private sector interventions.