ASTHA getting featured in SDC Global Health webinar

Achieving Sustainability Towards Health Care Access (ASTHA) has been featured at Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) Health Network’s webinar series on Private Sector Engagement (PSE) in health cooperation.

The series of webinars titled “The Private Sector as a partner in Health: Engagement modalities, limits, and perspectives” aims to explore the different forms of private sector engagement in health and to discuss the challenges and opportunities in public-private partnerships. Following the agenda, a panel discussion was held on April 14, 2021, on “Strengthening pro-poor markets for health and enhancing the role of local businesses”, one of the modules of the series.

The guest speakers discussed the diversity and comparative advantage of private sector actors in health and their importance in local contexts based on their experiences in Bangladesh, Tanzania, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, and Somalia. The panel discussion also shed light on the common misconception of private sector’s role in the pro-poor market. One of the key speakers of this webinar was Ms. Anja Baudacci who shared her experiences of working with ASTHA, a healthcare project of Swisscontact Bangladesh. She highlighted the challenges of working in a poorly coordinated system between public and private sector actors. She further shared her observations on partnering with private training institutes and private health service providers to create a skilled healthcare workforce in rural areas of Bangladesh.

The webinar had a total of 72 participants from across the world.