Emily Bell — Partnering with Government

The Who Cares? Blog will be exploring the theme of government partnerships this month.

In the developing country context, international nonprofits usually require a strong relationship with and buy-in from national and/or local government to enable positive change. The Touch Foundation is no exception. Touch benefits from a close relationship with the Tanzanian Government, meeting and collaborating regularly with their Ministry for Health and Social Welfare. Tanzanian President Jakaya M. Kikwete himself has met with Touch Foundation President Lowell Bryan on several occasions, including at the State House in Dar es Salaam this past spring.

The Touch Foundation’s goals are closely aligned with those of the Tanzanian Government. The Government is determined to improve health care and pledged in 2007 to build hundreds of new clinics and health centers to ensure that no one is more than five kilometers (three miles) from medical care. This infrastructure is essential, but without medical staff, managers, drugs, and other resources, its impact will be limited. Based on our experience at Weill Bugando’s medical college, the Tanzanian Minister for Health and Social Welfare personally asked the Touch Foundation to assist his Ministry in scaling up health worker training capacity at the national level. In early 2007, the Ministry developed the newly published Twiga Initiative to dramatically increase health worker production. With the help of McKinsey & Company, we identified a baseline for current national training capacity and developed and prioritized initiatives to help the government achieve health training goals.

The Tanzanian Government relies on support from donor country governments to carry out its policies. Coordination and communication between donor governments and the myriad of nonprofit organizations in Tanzania are also therefore of paramount importance. In many cases, nonprofits may provide valuable information about a political, health or social situation that can help inform the development policy of a donor country like the US. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is a key development partner for the Touch Foundation in Tanzania. They are supporting our work to strengthen the health workforce through a Global Development Alliance public-private partnership.

An exciting development has been the US President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)’s growing recognition of the need to train more health workers to control HIV/AIDS globally, particularly in Africa. PEPFAR has committed to supporting developing countries to train at least 140,000 new healthcare workers in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care. In this podcast, Touch Foundation’s Executive Director Lee Wells shares our view on the importance of health workers in tackling the major disease killers.

This month, we welcome your thoughts or experiences relating to government and nonprofits partnerships to support positive change in global healthcare.

Emily Bell is Head of Advocacy and Communications at the Touch Foundation.