Building National Health Services Through Innovative Financing Mechanisms and Mobile Technology

PharmAccess Foundation (Amsterdam) was founded by the late Prof. Joep Lange in 2001. Built upon the core of challenging the status quo that being poor denies people from fundamental healthcare, PharmAccess has innovated comprehensive mechanisms to achieve inclusive healthcare for populations in several sub-Saharan countries. 

In partnership with the government of Kisumu County in Kenya and supported by the national government, PharmAccess together with CarePay (platform developer) built a scheme called MARWA that integrates social health insurance coverage into the digital health platform. Linking healthcare payment transactions between patients, providers with insurers digitally, MARWA was launched in 2019 to cover the most vulnerable indigent households of Kisumu. 

Recognizing healthcare is fragmented in many regions where patients have to navigate complex system of services and payers, PharmAccess aims to further their flagship digital platform for health, called M-TIBA mobile health wallet, towards its full potential of connecting end users with multiple service providers and payers. A case study, Mama Toto, offering care bundles to 15,000 pregnant mothers during their pregnancy and the first 1,000 days of babies’ life is ongoing at a network of M-TIBA clinics in the greater Nairobi area. The goal is to demonstrate that a digitized system of healthcare financing can result in improved delivery of fundamental care.  

Press Release: MARWA

Website: PharmAccess Partners and Donors

Website: Care Bundles

National programs for hepatitis elimination are projected to be cost-effective over time yet the large capital required to initiate activities is very challenging for lower income countries. A demonstration project of catalytic financing was conducted in Uzbekistan. The CDA Foundation (Colorado, USA) organized a consortium of governmental, clinical, non-profit and industrial stakeholders to test if upfront capital from donations can jump-start a subsequently self-funded program. This goal was not achieved. However, the project’s simplified test-and-treat cascade was adopted by the Uzbekistan Ministry of Health. This achievement was instrumental in the presidential decree in 2022, that the government is self-funding their own national elimination program where Uzbeks are to receive free testing and treatment for hepatitis C and/or vaccination for hepatitis B.

Publication: Progress Toward Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C Elimination Using a Catalytic Funding Model

Publication: Viral Hepatitis Elimination Challenges in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Website: CFA Foundation-UHEP