A new UNAIDS report looks at the contribution of AIDS-related public-private partnerships to the six building blocks of health systems: service delivery; human resources; information; medicines and technologies; financing; and leadership. The publication highlights how AIDS has been a strong catalyst in the establishment of public-private partnerships for health, particularly in Africa. While many of these public-private partnerships focused primarily on HIV, they later expanded to cover other health issues.
The issue of public-private partnerships was the focus of a breakout session of the Thematic Segment of the 23rd UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board Meeting in Geneva on 15 December 2008. The UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board commissioned the UNAIDS Secretariat to compile “best practices and lessons learned to support and facilitate public-private partnerships with respect to their applicability for strengthening the public sector in low and middle income countries”. The report summarizes these best practices and lessons learned.
“This publication is innovative as it approaches public-private partnerships via a very specific angle: Their applicability to strengthen the public sector. We hope the report will provide some guidance on critical steps private and public actors need to take to maximize the potential of public-private partnerships for the benefit of public health. The report also demonstrates that if we keep AIDS in isolation, we will fail to link HIV to the broader international health and development agenda, as represented by the MDGs,” says UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé.
The publication is based on research and interviews conducted with representatives of private and public organization stakeholders as well as development partners. Twelve public-private partnerships with strong collaborative relations with government institutions in the country of implementation were identified to present insider perspectives on catalysts and hurdles which may be encountered in developing collaboration. Good practices have been identified, including their degree of sustainability, their integration in the national AIDS control plan, and their ability to produce measurable results, etc.
For example, the publication features “Phones for Health”, a partnership between the healthcare software provider Voxiva, the phone producer Motorola, the telecom company MTN, the GSMA Development Fund, PEPFAR, CDC Foundation, Accenture Development Partnerships and various governments. Voxiva developed a software application that integrates with core health applications and that can be downloaded to a wide range of mobile phones. A health worker with this software on the phone can input health data and transfer them to a central data base where the data can be analyzed. In addition, the health worker can order medicines, send alerts, download guidelines, or access training materials.
Other public-private partnerships presented in the publication include North Star Foundation, BD’s Wellness Centres relieving the pressure on nurses in sub-Saharan Africa, DataDyne and Vodaphone Foundation developing health surveys with EpiSurveyor, Abbott Fund’s laboratory support from national to regional level in Tanzania, Mars supporting the National Health Insurance Scheme of Ghana, Fondation Sogebank managing Global Fund grants as Principal Recipient in Haiti, etc.
For more information, or if you are interested in receiving a printed copy of the report, please contact Marie Engel, UNAIDS.
