PharmAccess is a group of non-profit organizations dedicated to improving access to quality healthcare in Africa. PharmAccess mobilizes public and private resources for the benefit of doctors and patients through clinical standards and quality improvements, loans for healthcare providers, health insurance, mHealth innovations and operational research.
This integrated approach is made possible by the following organizations:
About us
When Prof. Joep Lange founded PharmAccess in 2001, he was determined to turn his groundbreaking scientific research on triple-combination drug therapy into action. His drive brought life-saving AIDS treatment to those who needed it most. Joep’s vision of increasing access to affordable and better healthcare for people in sub-Saharan Africa is still at the heart of what we do.
Building on this work on the front lines of HIV/AIDS treatment, our focus has broadened to making healthcare finance and delivery more effective and more inclusive. We pioneer innovations that explore new directions and provide real world solutions in order to reverse the vicious cycle that stifles progress. We mobilize public and private resources for the benefit of doctors and patients through a combination of health insurance, loans for healthcare providers, quality standards, provider services, health analytics and mHealth innovations, that have been tested in our mHealth lab.
We believe that mobile technology has the potential to revolutionize the healthcare sector and reach people who until now have remained structurally excluded (read article “Africa on the rise”). It can reduce barriers to savings, remittances and insurance for health, cut costs, generate data to reduce risks and increase knowledge, and serve as a platform for training and education. We have been developing and testing mobile money-based health financing solutions since 2013. One such innovation is the M-TIBA mobile health wallet, a digital wallet on the mobile phone that contains funds and benefits that can only be used for healthcare. Ideas and new developments first get tested in our mHealth Labs. These labs are an integrated live testing ground identify gaps that prevent access to quality healthcare or access to health financing and to ideate and test mobile health solutions to address these gaps. Through this approach we aim to become a frontrunner in digital innovation for healthcare
PharmAccess has a multidisciplinary team of professionals in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria, Namibia and the Netherlands. Our work builds on a solid base of national and international public-private partnerships. Among the donors and development organizations supporting our work are the Dutch government, the Dutch Postcode Lottery, World Bank/IFC, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID).
Our partners also include multinationals like Safaricom, Heineken, Shell, Zilveren Kruis | Achmea and Pfizer.
In Africa, we collaborate with several governments, parastatals such as Kenya’s National Hospital Insurance Fund or Tanzania’s National Health Insurance Fund, insurance companies such as Hygeia, banks, health maintenance organizations and social franchise networks such as Marie Stopes International (MSI), Society for Family Health (SFH) and Population Services International (PSI).
Lean more about our mission & vision and objectives
‘To those who regularly visit sub-Saharan Africa, the pace of change is indeed astonishing, and there are many reasons to be optimistic about the region. We should, however, also realize that very little has changed for the poor in rural settings, and that the lives of those who left for urban slums are extremely difficult. To include the latter two groups in the ‘great escape’ from poverty is the big challenge ahead.’
Joep Lange (1954-2014)
