|
Health
Private healthcare Africa’s latest boom
Africa’s healthcare needs are enormous and despite improvements over the past decade, governments are struggling to provide anywhere near sufficient services to their populations. But the private sector, with financing from both foreign and domestic capital, is becoming an increasingly vital component of the continent’s healthcare mix – accounting for around 60% of the $16.7bn spend on the sector. With Africa’s middle classes growing rapidly, this sector’s expansion is on a par with that of telecoms or infrastructure. Sarah Rundell reports.
It’s the first new hospital Lesotho has seen in 50 years. The $100m, 425-bed National Referral Hospital in the capital Maseru will replace the aged Queen Elizabeth II with eight well-equipped operating theatres, an intensive care unit and a laboratory when it opens next March. The expansive building is the fruition of an innovative public-private partnership (PPP) between South Africa’s biggest private healthcare operator, JSE-listed Netcare, the Development Bank of South Africa and the Lesotho government, overseen by the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation.
Lesotho’s new hospital is a shining example of the impact private investment is having on Africa’s troubled healthcare sector, where governments alone struggle to fund the massive spend required to boost services. Despite improvements, the health of the vast majority of people in sub-Saharan Africa remains in jeopardy. According to research by consultancy McKinsey, life expectancy actually slid by more than two years to 47 between 1990 to 2005, and millions of Africans still suffer from diseases that are relatively simple to prevent or treat.
Private healthcare is not new to Africa. IFC research found that of the $16.7bn in total health expenditure in 2005, around 60% was privately financed, and about half of the total spend went to private providers. It is just that more private investors are dipping their toes – enthused by the continent’s growing middle class, the rising availability of generic drugs and the nascent growth of a low-cost insurance in a sector which the World Bank says is worth nearly $20bn a year and growing.
|
SITE EN FRANÇAIS
print story
