Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs extends support for Health Insurance Fund
Funding extended for seven years
- Oct 09, 2015
On Friday, 9 October 2015, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced their continued support for the Health Insurance Fund. The Ministry has extended their funding for the next seven years. Dutch Minister for Trade and Development Lilianne Ploumen sees our approach as an example of how public-private partnerships can accelerate change, improving quality of and access to healthcare in Africa. PharmAccess, the main implementing partner of the Health Insurance Fund, is very grateful for this invaluable support and highly motivated to continue working towards inclusive healthcare for people in Africa.
- The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued this statement
- The Dutch daily newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad also announced the news
- On Saturday 10 October, Het Financieele Dagblad published a lengthy article about PharmAccess’ history and innovations. Read it here. You can also read the English translation here.
In February 2015, the Ministry commissioned the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to assess the progress and achievements of the first funding term of the Health Insurance Fund (HIF) and its executing partner PharmAccess over the eight years since inception. Overall, judged that the grant to the HIF was well-invested. According to BCG, the long-term commitment of the Ministry enabled HIF/PharmAccess and its partners to spur a number of transformative innovations, strengthening both private and public health sector capacity and pioneering the inclusive market development paradigm.
These include among others the first major public-private partnership for health insurance in Africa (Kwara program), the first accredited quality system for health providers in resource-constrained settings (SafeCare) and the first loans fund for health SMEs (Medical Credit Fund).
Once these market-based innovations started garnering broad support from local stakeholders, donors, development finance institutions and impact investors, access to quality healthcare was increased for low- and middle income people and the threshold for investment was lowered.
Furthermore, the report states that HIF funding “allowed PharmAccess to intervene in an area where not many NGOs delve into: the complex public-private healthcare system. In the process they successfully introduced (if not completed) the targeted paradigm shift, accomplished their key objectives and bettered the internal organization and its partners.” According to the evaluation report, this has contributed to a significant change in the way the role of private sector development in healthcare is perceived today.