INVESTING IN HEALTH YIELDS FINANCIAL RETURNS AND BENEFITS

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

GAVI Alliance and IBLF unite international business leaders and health experts

Investing in health yields financial returns and benefits poor people in the developing world. That was the main message at a high-level conference hosted by the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) and the GAVI Alliance.

By bringing together successful public-private partnerships, GAVI and IBLF aim to show the impact on global health that can be made by joining forces - especially in times of economic crisis. More than 80 leading experts from governments, business, and NGOs gathered to share their expertise and recommendations on how to improve access to affordable healthcare. From promoting research for and access to immunisation and preventing HIV to ensuring good nutrition, the participants explored innovative public-private initiatives to address fundamental global health needs.

Referring to the current economic climate, GAVI's CEO Dr Julian Lob-Levyt said that health partnerships should uphold their ambitions. "The GAVI Alliance is a proven public-private model for development financing and the demand for immunisation assistance from countries is only growing. Our partnership with IBLF is one way we can share innovative and results-based approaches while at the same time learn more from the private sector."

IBLF's CEO Adam Leach added, "Such partnerships can be literally life-saving, as the work of GAVI and others have demonstrated. We believe the business world has core skills that can and should be harnessed. We must find ways to translate these business competencies into demonstrable benefits in terms of human health and security and economic prosperity."

DFID supports public-private approach

"Investing in immunisation and healthcare systems is more than a humanitarian gesture," British Secretary of State Douglas Alexander said at the event. "By lifting the disease burden from poor communities we not only give individuals the chance to earn their own living, but creating healthier communities eventually benefits the whole of society. Health contributes to human security through creating the circumstances within which the private sector can invest thereby making long-term economic and sustainable development possible. An effective health system is one of the pillars of economic success."

Mr Alexander re-affirmed the intention of his government not to let the current economic crisis impede international development funding. "We cannot allow the current crisis to set back public health programmes to the detriment of millions of children and families in the world's poorest countries."

New estimates by the UN suggest that the economic crisis could lead to an increase of between 200,000 and 400,000 in infant deaths.

Business must play its part

Dame Graça Machel, former Education Minister of Mozambique and president of the Mozambican community-based organisation FDC, encouraged business people to become active in Africa.

"Throughout Africa and in Mozambique I have seen the impact and results that health investments have made. Mozambique was the first country to receive GAVI-funded vaccines. Before we began working with GAVI, 203 out of 1000 children died each year, before reaching their fifth birthday. Today this number has decreased to 138. This year, Mozambique will roll out a pentavalent vaccine that includes antigens against haemophilus influenzae type b (hib), diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and hepatitis B. This will further reduce child mortality by around four percent."

Dame Graça Machel's appeal to the business and public sectors to sustain investment in the health sector is echoed by the GAVI Alliance and IBLFDame Graça Machel's appeal to the business and public sectors to sustain investment in the health sector is echoed by the GAVI Alliance and IBLF.

"Protecting a child against five major diseases costs an average of just US$ 20 and the benefits to the individual and society are many fold," Dr Julian Lob-Levyt, GAVI CEO, explained. "It is less expensive to prevent disease than to treat a person for the rest of his or her life. Preventive healthcare saves not only family health expenses, but enables parents to be more productive as they are freed from caring for sick children. All this directly helps break the vicious cycle of poverty."

Dame Graça Machel added, "We need all public and private sectors to work together to share their skills and expertise if we want to fulfil the fundamental right to good health for every child, every human-being, in the world.

Widespread endorsement for public-private collaboration

Experts from PATH, Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), the International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM), the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), and Applied Strategies endorse this public-private approach. At specialist roundtable sessions, they shared examples of successful interventions made possible due to new technologies - such as the HPV vaccine against cervical cancer - and of how existing basic interventions like making bed nets available to whole populations can save lives.

Sandy Wrobel, CEO of Applied Strategies, said: "The global health community is facing significant challenges, and private sector expertise and technology tools can create a common framework for decision-making from which stakeholders can work toward the measurable impact we are all seeking to achieve with the health-related MDGs." Ms. Wrobel led the roundtable session on Technology-Based Solutions to Strengthen Global Health Decision-Making, drawing on attendees' global development experience and private sector insight to identify critical public health decisions that could benefit from technology-based solutions in the developing world. The session was well attended by executives from both the public and private sectors.

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