27 Feb PPPs Likely to Undermine Public Health Commitments
Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
Sensing the new opportunity for mega profits, the private sector has embraced the SDGs. The World Economic Forum now actively promotes PPPs with DEVEX, a private-sector driven network of development experts. A recent DEVEX opinion claims that PPPs can unlock billions for health financing. It invokes some philanthropy driven global partnership success stories — such as the Global Alliance for Vaccine Initiatives (GAVI) and the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria — to claim that national level PPPs will have similar results.
A managed equipment services (MES) arrangement with GE Healthcare in Kenya is also cited as a success story, ignoring criticisms. For example, Dr. Elly Nyaim, head of the Kenya Medical Association, has pointed out that MES has not addressed basic problems of Kenya’s health system, such as inappropriate training and non-payment of salaries to frontline health workers, encouraging emigration of well-trained health professionals to developed countries, further worsening Kenya’s already difficult health dilemmas.
It should be obvious to all that private sector participation in the development process is hardly novel, having long contributed to investments, growth and innovation. Not-for-profit civil society organisations (CSOs), especially faith-based ones, have also been significant for decades in education and health. Thus, in many developing countries such as Bangladesh and Indonesia, health and education outcomes are much better than what public expenditure alone could fund.
False claims
Typically driven by political choices rather than real economic considerations, PPP incurred debt and risk are generally higher than for government borrowing and procurement. PPPs also appear to have limited innovation and raised transactions costs. PPP hospital building quality is not necessarily better, while facilities management services have generally reduced VfM compared to non-PPP hospitals. Underfunding and higher PPP costs lead to cuts in service provision to reduce deficits, harming public health.
Healthcare PPPs in low- and middle-income countries have raised concerns about: competition with other health programmes for funding, causing inefficiencies and wasting resources; discrepancies in costs and benefits between partners typically favouring the private sector; incompatibility with national health strategies; poor government negotiating positions vis-à-vis powerful pharmaceutical and other healthcare service companies from donor countries.
Perverted Priorities
PPPs can thus lead governments to abdicate their responsibilities for promoting and protecting citizens’ health. Partnership arrangements with the private sector are not subject to public oversight. Therefore, selecting private partners, setting targets and formulating operating guidelines are not transparent, they only aid in creating more scope for corruption.
PPPs are certainly not magic bullets to achieve the SDGs. While PPPs can mobilize private finance, this can also be achieved at lower cost through government borrowing. Instead of uncritically promoting blended finance and PPPs, the international community should provide capacity building support to developing countries to safeguard the public interest, especially equity, access and public health, to ensure that no one is left behind.
(This article was originally published in Inter Press service (IPS) news on January 17, 2018)
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