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Private sector initiatives |
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The private sector is an integral part of the solution to improving health care in developing countries. Contrary to popular perception, the poor seek care in the private sector as often as – or more often than – wealthy people. The challenge is to ensure private sector health products and services are of high quality, available and affordable. Once this is achieved, consumers will be empowered to choose the services and products that best fulfil their needs.
Clinics and hospitals managed by NGOs or operated as commercial enterprises, pharmacies and kiosks, and other retail outlets are all part of the private sector healthcare delivery network. Options provides technical expertise and programme management services in support of strengthening private sector health services. Our many clients include KfW, DFID, ADB, CARICOM, MSI, PSI and Society for Family Health. Our work to date has focused in four main areas:
- Social Marketing: Options advises programmes on product launch, distribution, behaviour change communications, marketing, management, PEER and other research, fundraising and evaluation. We have provided technical expertise on social marketing in more than 12 countries and currently manage the CARISMA grant programme in the Caribbean where we focus on regional programme design and monitoring and measuring results.
- Output Based Aid: Options is working with MSI and KfW to expand understanding of Output Based Aid (sometimes referred to as Demand-Side Financing and linked with Results Based Financing). We organised panel discussions on OBA at the Women Deliver and Global Safe Abortion conferences in October 2007.
- Public-Private Collaboration: Options works with public, private and NGO sectors to enable them to work together to improve healthcare and expand markets for health products. In particular we believe donors and governments must give greater consideration to the role of the private sector in improving healthcare and Options is raising this question via our long-term programmes advising Ministries of Health in Cambodia, India, Pakistan and Nepal. We are well placed to assist with evaluating the appropriateness of contracting out for a variety of disease conditions and/or primary health care as well as to assist with the design and contracting process. In West Bengal, the DHFW is actively pursuing Public-Private Partnerships and has adopted an Options-designed checklist for PPP evaluation. In the Caribbean, Options convinced commercial sector condom distributors and manufacturers to provide sales data for a quarterly condom report that CARICOM now uses to measure their impact on HIV and AIDS.
- Social Franchising: As with social marketing, Options’ in-house technical team can provide management, consultancy and PEER research to Social Franchising programmes.
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