154837 Strengthening the role of the private sector to address the human resource crisis in Zambia

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Meaghan C. Smith, MIA , Banyan Global, New York, NY
Purpose

Zambia currently faces an HIV/AIDS epidemic and a serious human resource shortage in the public sector. As part of its strategy to address these problems and achieve Millenium Development Goals, the Ministry of Health aims to strengthen partnerships with the private health sector. In 2006 the USAID-funded Banking on Health Project (BoH) conducted a private health sector assessment in Zambia, determining that it was small and fragmented. There are, however, opportunities to grow the private health sector so that it can be an effective partner to the public sector and a source of livelihood for health practitioners that are interested in staying in Zambia. BoH designed an intervention to expand access to financing and improve business skills of private providers in order to address some of the factors that limit the growth of the private sector and its ability to partner with the government and address the human resource crisis.

Methods

BoH took a three-pronged approach to program design: 1) Conducting market research on the private health sector to feed into training for financial institutions and private providers and baseline data for monitoring. 2) Partnering with financial institutions to promote health sector lending. 3) Partnering with business development organizations to provide training to improve the viability of private practices.

BoH is monitoring this intervention through a combination of provider and financial institution surveys and pre and post-tests that measure changes in provider knowledge as a result of the training.

Results

During the first year of programming, BoH is reporting on the following results: * Increased number of loans to the private health sector * Improved financial viability * Changes in priority services offered by the private health sector

Policy Implications

The human resource crisis impacts many developing countries. The presenter will discuss lessons learned and applicability to other countries.

Learning Objectives:
Identify strategies to partner with the private health sector to address the human resource crisis in developing countries.

Keywords: Financing, Management and Sustainability

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No
Any institutionally-contracted trials related to this submission?

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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