Okay, so here is where you can read all the exciting news from the 36th Annual International Conference on Global Health as it unfolds.
We haven’t actually had the “Grand Breakfast Gala Opening” yet but already there have been a plethora of workshops and auxiliary sessions… and unlimited coffee and chocolate brownies! In fact, there definitely seems to be some sort of competition between the different workshop sponsors on who can provide the most lavish feast and I am certainly not complaining… by the way, you will be pleased to know that our MSI stand is giving away free British sweets so hopefully that will draw in the crowds.
As for the sessions, we had a really good panel discussion this morning on public-private partnerships - a topic close to MSI’s heart. We discussed the urgent need for mobilising the private sector in the rollout of treatment for TB and AIDS.
An Abt Associates study in Ethiopia showed how the private sector is keen to be involved in TB treatment – not just because of financial gain but also because of a sense of social responsibility and in recognition of the skills they could gain by working with the government.
Following a capacity-building programme, the outcomes (both clinical and quality) were comparable between the private and public providers. This evidence counteracts the common perception that private providers will provide low-quality services with lower success rates. The challenges in working with private providers are to:
- ensure private providers follow national guidelines;
- collect monitoring data consistently;
- encourage private providers to participate in government planning exercises;
- communicate new policy or protocol changes to private providers
- develop sustainable solutions for when the “honest broker” disappears
Of particular interest to MSI, is the role of NGOs. The panellists stressed the importance of distinguishing between the “private not-for-profit” sector and the “private-for-profit” sector. An obvious role for us non-profit NGOs is as an “honest broker” between government and private providers.
In addition, NGOs can play an important role in training, accreditation and coordination of private providers. Sound familiar? Basically, this chimes really well with all the lessons that we have learnt from our own MSI BlueStar programme.
As well as approval and accreditation, there are four other main types of public-private partnership:
- employees schemes;
- partnerships combining private and public resources;
- health insurance schemes; and
- contracting-out public sector services to the private sector.
Clearly, MSI is already an innovator in many of these areas and the panellists recognised that lessons from family planning programmes should be used now in scaling-up access to HIV treatment.
The second session that I attended today was the Biannual Meeting of the Postabortion Care (PAC) Consortium. We had three USAID staff talk through the recent policy changes. They explained that the Helm’s Amendment is still in place (which prohibits any funding to be used for abortion which is coercive or used for family planning) and that USAID still does not fund any safe abortion programmes and this is unlikely to change in the near future.
They do fund post abortion care but won’t fund any of the supplies needed for emergency treatment. The good news is that they explicitly welcomed new partners and various people mentioned MSI. Dana and I are off to talk with them on Thursday so hopefully this will be the beginning of a new era!
The session was really participatory and there were lots of people from countries such as Egypt and Jordon who are currently trying to introduce PAC programmes and facing similar problems. One of the major challenges seems to be that governments will not support the introduction of MVA equipment which makes PAC impossible. Clearly advocacy here is important and ministries that have successfully started programmes and included MVA equipment on the national supply lists play a pivotal role in sharing those experiences with other countries.
Quote of the day goes to one participant who asked “ Why are we going for cable when we could go straight to digital?” as an analogy for why are we wasting our time trying to get countries to introduce MVA equipment for PAC, when we could go straight for medical abortion. Bring on the digital age!