Health Systems

Rationale for Working on Health Systems Strengthening

In recent years, much has been said about the shortcomings of focusing solely on vertical disease programmes at the expense of not addressing “root cause” health system issues such as weak governance, information systems, poor infrastructure or human resource challenges. Strengthening national and regional health systems calls for well coordinated partnerships between government, NGOs, development partners and other sector stakeholders such as private businesses.

Against this background, the GHI:

Stresses global and regional efforts aimed at strengthening the management of health systems in Africa

During the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town, South Africa, the Forum’s Global Health Initiative (GHI) convened a private meeting on 4 June to profile efforts being taken to strengthen the management of health systems in Africa. The meeting, which brought together 30 individuals from the corporate sector, academia, civil society and government, focused on sharing leading practices and initiatives to best address the gaps and scale up efforts in a sustainable way. 

Participants listened to perspectives from regional and international experts, including representatives of Merck & Co, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Global Health Workforce Alliance, Africa Matters, BroadReach Healthcare, Philips Medical Systems South Africa, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Centre Africain d'Etudes Supérieures en Gestion (CESAG), Duke University, Aspen Pharmacare Holdings, Exxon Mobil Corporation, the Foundation for Professional Development and the GHI. 

The WHO Human Resources for Health Leadership and CESAG, for example, shared their plans for a Pan-African Health Resource Network, which aims to strengthen the capacity of managers and the effectiveness of African health systems through a regional pool of private and public resources, standards and advocacy. Baledzi Gaolathe, Minister of Finance and Development Planning of Botswana, and Brian Chituwo, Minister of Health of Zambia, shared their views on building management capacity in their countries, as well as the role of the private sector.

Embarked, in 2005, on a process to identify clear and specific opportunities where businesses could work in partnership with the public sector, to strengthen health systems in Sub-Sahara Africa.

As a result of this process, the GHI is currently catalysing an innnovative public-private partnership (PPP) whose purpose is to contribute to the strengthening of the management of health systems in Sub-Saharan Africa at a national strategic level by leveraging private sector core competencies and resources to improve system performance of the sector.

In particular, in Ghana, the first country to pilot this project in, the GHI Health systems Management Strengthening initiative intends to:

• Work in support of ongoing national health reforms
• Build on existing, in-country leading practices for health system management
• Facilitate an approach that emphasizes ownership and sustainability
• Leverage broad, untapped private sector business management skills to support in-country needs

For more information on this GHI project:

• Strengthening Health systems in Sub-saharan Africa: Working with Governments (PDF; 2 pgs; 225k)
• From Funding to Action: Strengthening Healthcare Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa White Paper (PDF; 51 pages, 1.09MB)
• Article from Perspective, African Journal on HIV/AIDS, Issue 12/2006: The Health of Healthcare (PDF, 2 pgs; 2.8MB)