Breaking The Health-Poverty Trap

If there is one area that vividly sums up Africa’s development challenges, it is the field of health. Every year, the lack of basic health care resources stemming primarily from poor funding, contributes to millions of deaths and countless incidents of untreated disease. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Africa carries 25% of the world’s disease burden but its share of global health expenditures is less than 1%. Countries across the continent struggle with 3 principal problems. One: disruptions in medical equipment and drug supply chains. Two: a lack of medical data analysis and storage. Three: lack of financing. In view of these problems and with the mission to solve them, the NGO Global Care Heroes (GCH) arose.

Fig 1.

To combat supply chain issues regarding basic health resources and personnel, GCH made its first trip to Kenya. During the mission to the country, team members visited the Nyawara Health Center in Yala, Siaya County, and provided medical care to over 1,600 patients. In partnership with a local organization, GCH offered dental services, cervical cancer screening, minor and major surgeries, an on-site lab, and a fully stocked pharmacy.

In order to address the lack of medical data storage, GCH is working on the development of an app to digitally record the medical history of patients. This allows suppliers to have a better understanding of the most common diseases in the area and thus apply analytics to prioritize the delivery of certain medicines to the community. However, while this technology-based idea would help this small community in Kenya, this example needs to be replicated in all the other sub-Saharan countries suffering from inefficient healthcare systems. This is a major challenge and therefore involves more disruptive technology and the essential component for any world scale project: financing.

Under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3.8, established in 2015, governments around the world are committed to achieving universal health coverage (UHC). This involves achieving universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services, and access to safe, effective, quality, and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all. Thus, the key determinant of access to quality healthcare is access to financing. Here the question arises: How can we use finance tools to improve access to healthcare? Global Care Heroes believes the answer lies in a concept called FinTech.

Thus, GCH plans to apply 4 FinTech tools to improve healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa.

1) InsurTech: Through the creation of micro-insurance with low premiums based on a defined cultural group.

2) Crowdfunding: Through fundraising and digital crowdfunding.

3) Digital Savings: Designing digital savings wallets for people to save money for future medical expenses.

4) Digital lending: Using alternative credit scoring tools that allow those "excluded from the banking system" to get loans. Through P2P Lending (Loans from one individual to another) or microfinance (small loans for a short period offered by a specialized company).

Thus, based on these 4 pathways, the NGO proposes an intersection between finance and health to achieve its long-term goal: Breaking the health-poverty trap.

Fig. 2