THE DRAWING BOARD IS WAITING 4 US ALL TO BETTER PUBLIC HEALTH
While the world is waking up these days to Healthcare as a top priority; I have quit my corporate job 5 years ago to make it my priority. We have since worked extremely hard to understand what is going wrong, how to fix and whom to address and hold accountable for the lack of Universal Health Coverage across the globe. In the process of finding where to focus; early on it was clear that the emerging and developing countries needed the most help and they also have more opportunities to Leapfrog and tap into technology and innovation to address exponentially the Broken Healthcare systems. Healthcare is a complex world with so many Regulations and let's be honest it keeps us Alive or Not, So Issues are multiples and often intertwined.
Here is our View after talking to multiple ministries of health and observing long terms Healthcare agendas of emerging countries.
Looking at this above Exhibit, our Observation is that across the globe, Europe and Few Countries of Asia offer Healthcare Self Esteem to its citizens and travelers to their countries. Although the quality of Healthcare institutions exists; the population doesn't seem to be fully comfortable to afford The USA & Canadian ones.
Now, I want to focus on the one that has kept me awake for the last 5 years; that is the African Healthcare system. In a time, where the continent has been screaming that they don't want to be Guinea Pigs, That all countries are doing what they can with the limited healthcare resources against COVID-19, elites that have to face they can't go abroad if they are sick and the population celebrating the new appointment of high profiles into an African Union COVID-19's Task Force. I am very worried because the diverse parties (Civil society, care professionals, care seekers, governments, and lobbyists) are currently putting the energy on the wrong Priority.
We need huge investments in Healthcare across the continent both as producers of healthcare products/services just as consumers of products and services to deliver effective and efficient healthcare to the 1 billion beautiful souls on the continent but also to the millions of travelers across the continent. A report from the Asian Development Bank depicting the $2.5 Billion of PPE healthcare products (Please see Asian Development Bank Report) shows that in this rather basic healthcare utility Africa plays no role, neither in importing nor in local manufacturing. That leads me to strongly believe that we poorly serve our citizens because this is the least equipment that must be frequently used by medical professionals.
A meeting with Multilateral development banks on 24 May 2019 where I met Dutch Representatives at the World Bank, AFDB, IFAD, EBRD, ADB, Inter-American Development Bank led me to conclude that Healthcare is often left to Nations. This is because they have set priorities in other areas such as shown in Exhibit 4 "down here" from the AFDB. Having worked with Nations and observed the struggle at different levels of the Healthcare hierarchy; So little % of the GDP budget is pushed into the healthcare sector although many of those countries have a vision and clear roadmaps (Example of South Africa, Western Cape, Cuba, Cameroon, Guinea, Ethiopia ). The rest of the pyramid is, therefore, a disaster, care providers that are educated serve and lack business and entrepreneurship capabilities (see Case Study about Cameroon, on why healthcare expansion is challenging ) and citizens that have limited purchasing power to afford quality and sometimes basic healthcare due to Out of Pocket payment.
We have full recipes for disaster if not today; it will be tomorrow so let's get our act together, GO ON THE DRAWING BOARD, and Design better healthcare services, systems, and job creation spaces for the citizens.
WE NEED TO ACT NOW/TODAY AND WORK TOWARDS UNIVERSAL HEALTH COVERAGE BY 2030
Published on April 13, 2020