Integrating Microfinance and Health - Global Microcredit Summit 2011

More documents

Recommendations

Info

to women’s health. One such area is the increase in Pap smear rates from 36 percent of womenbefore joining Pro Mujer to 95 percent since joining. In 2009, more than 140,000 medicalconsultations and 26,000 Pap smears were conducted by the organization.Pro Mujer in Nicaragua is leading a health pilot with the collaboration of Global Partnerships,PATH and Linked Foundation to test a new model for service delivery. The pilot focuses onearly diagnosis of cervical and breast cancer, non-communicable chronic conditions such asdiabetes and hypertension, as well as anemia and a number of other common diseases. With thismodel of delivery, there is parallel provision of healthcare services by medical staff and unifiedprovision of financial services and business, empowerment and preventive health education bycredit officers who moderate communal bank association meetings. At Pro Mujer’s operations inNicaragua, the monthly ―premium cost‖ to the client is $2.40 or an annual cost of $29.00(Salvador 2011). After six months of pilot operations (November 2010), 3,287 clients wereparticipating in the new health service package. Pro Mujer projects that it will be able to cover allof its costs to provide this revised health service package in less than two years. Currently, thisservice is offered to the client only, but the eventual plan is to open the services to the client’schildren and other family members as well.In the Philippines, the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD) hasaddressed access barriers, particularly in rural areas, by developing a network of privatehealthcare providers, available through a ―Healthy Pinoy‖ membership card, which entitlesCARD members to discounts of 10 to 40 percent on primary and diagnostic healthcare servicesoffered by physicians, dentists, hospitals, laboratories, optometrists and midwives. The CARDstaff assess basic aspects of quality before signing up providers. By the end of 2010, CARDclients and family members were making approximately 10,000 visits per year to CARD’s―Healthy Pinoy‖ providers, who report that this preferred provider program has helped themreach more patients and strengthened their services; for example, such as improving follow-upwith patients. For CARD, the annual direct cost per client is only $0.10 (and $0.17 total annualcost per client including allocated overhead). If CARD were to offer this program to all of itsmembers, the total cost per client would cause a reduction in institutional profit margin of about.5 percent—from the 12 percent reported in 2008 to 11.5 percent. This program was never16
intended to be profitable and no offsetting revenue is collected. It is strictly a social benefit formembers to improve their health, build their loyalty and increase the capacity of the localhealthcare system for the benefit of whole populations of Filipinos.Improved Access to Health ProductsCompared to published studies of the models, benefits and costs of microfinance providersincreasing client access to health education and services, there are few documented andresearched examples of microfinance providers offering their clients access to health products.Although this may seem of secondary concern, access to products beneficial to family health(such as medications, oral rehydration salts, mosquito nets, paracetamol, de-worming pills,antiseptic lotion, oral contraceptive pills) is a major need, and some products—such asinsecticide-treated nets—are life saving.In Bénin, Freedom from Hunger and Innovations for Poverty Action worked with themicrofinance provider Projet d’Appui au Developpement des Micro-Entreprises (PADME)to conduct a randomized, controlled trial to evaluate the impact of health education for theprevention and treatment of malaria and HIV/AIDS (Metcalfe et al. 2010). The education wasconducted in combination with village banking meetings. To complement the malaria education,some of the same PADME field agents also distributed insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) to villagebanking clients at $2 per net (subsidized by separate donor funding). They simply carried andsold a small supply of nets with them to the weekly Credit with Education meetings in thevillages. While the education alone was probably sufficient to increase ITN possession and usein the household (de la Cruz et al. 2009), the distribution of ITNs no doubt increased availabilityand thereby was partly responsible for the observed increase (16%) in the number of householdspossessing an ITN in good repair (significantly more than households without access to either themalaria education or the ITN distribution). PADME’s Credit with Education program with ITNdistribution could not disaggregate the cost of village banking from education or from ITNdistribution. However, the marginal costs of ITN distribution (time to obtain the nets, inventoryand distribution to field agents, and process payments) was at least partially offset by the revenuefrom ITN purchased.17
Page 1 and 2: 2011 Global Microcredit SummitCommi
Page 3 and 4: Integrating Microfinance and Health
Page 6 and 7: Microfinance clients and staff freq
Page 8 and 9: In data collected in three countrie
Page 10 and 11: Table 1: Principal barriers to heal
Page 14 and 15: outcomes (Box 1) that are criticall
Page 16 and 17: MFI-sourced over-the-counter health
Page 20 and 21: As described above, research with B
Page 22 and 23: and health micro-insurance. Further
Page 24 and 25: Microfinance providers clearly can
Page 26 and 27: Figure 2. Range of health-related i
Page 28 and 29: and private-sector health professio
Page 30 and 31: BibliographyAnderson GF. Missing in
Page 32 and 33: Metcalfe M & Reinsch Sinclair M. En
Page 34 and 35: U.S. Agency for International Devel
Page 36 and 37: ASIAOrganization Health Services Co
Page 38 and 39: Organization Health Services Countr
Page 40 and 41: Appendix BThree Case Descriptions:
Page 42 and 43: Rigorous studies conducted in 2008
Page 44 and 45: its clients. The doctors worked at
Page 46 and 47: All programs are currently particip
Page 48 and 49: The MAHP initiative found that heal

Integrating Microfinance and Health - Global Microcredit Summit 2011

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?