On December 10, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between Amref Flying Doctors (internationally known as Amref Health Africa) and FMO, the Dutch development bank.
This agreement seeks to formalise and intensify the partnership between FMO and Amref, after a successful first collaboration on an innovative model aimed to improve primary healthcare in Makueni, Kenya.
The MoU is for a duration of one year and aims to scale-up the successful model for improving primary healthcare in Africa, share knowledge and to attract new partners and capital.
“Combining our efforts with FMO gives us the opportunity to increase our impact in Africa through new partnerships and capital. The legal and business expertise of FMO in deploying development capital is key in order to successfully scale-up our PPP (Public Private Partnership) model for primary healthcare,” said Patricia Vermeulen, CEO of Amref in the Netherlands.
Janet Nieboer, Director FMO NL Business: “Working together with Amref Flying Doctors means that we are able to fulfil one of our key objectives: increasing our impact through partnerships and leveraging these partnerships to mobilize more capital and catalyse investments in frontier markets. The partnership will help FMO’s Dutch Business department to develop a health strategy for deploying development capital.”
| Signing ceremony at FMO office in The Hague |
Together with the Makueni County government, FMO and Philips, Amref is currently doing a feasibility study in Makueni County to test a PPP model for improving the quality of and accessibility to primary care in a financially sustainable way.
In this partnership Amref is managing the health facilities, offers capacity building and health worker training. Philips is responsible for providing the health system infrastructure, IT systems and the medical equipment in the clinics. Makueni County is responsible for policy, regulation, and quality management. FMO provides part of the funding for the current study, next to legal and business expertise. As financial co-developer, FMO focuses on options for the financing of the scale up following the study.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), strengthening primary care is the most efficient, fair, and cost-effective way to achieve health impacts. In addition, in line with the WHO, Kenya Vision 2030, and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta identified universal health coverage as one of his “Big Four” objectives for the coming five years.
| Makueni health clinic |
