PARTNERS IN AFFORDABLE HEALTH what i have learnt from 15 trips to bangladesh and more broadly from 50 to asia is sustainability will most likely depend on celebrating those who empower health networks around love not those who power over health with money -happy to zoom or debate cases on this any time rsvp chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk
frugal is the terminology brac celebrates in innovating health and well being services in life critical ways but on minimal budgets- brac's doubling of network services every 2.5 years emerged as south/east partnering centre of gravity 10 years ahead of western bottom of pyramid studies -eg gary hamel , and 3.2 the building of the microfranchise of women health suppliers goes back to start of brac early 1970s
we find searches of brac delivery kits first produced 1998 offer a range of reports and academic inputs illustrating brac's longitudinal work and increasing centre of gravity for frugal partnerships
In the developing world, life often runs on jugaad solutions. According to the authors of Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth, western businesses could learn a lot from the jugaad approach of innovation and radical affordability.
Development organizations, too, must create inexpensive and adaptable solutions to alleviate poverty. The BRAC birthing kit is one such example.
BRAC has grappled with the problem of high maternal and infant mortality in a country where the vast majority of women still give birth at home without a skilled attendant. Your response might be to build more or bigger hospitals; BRAC instead brought suitable alternatives to the women themselves, in the form of “birthing huts” in the slums of Dhaka and other Bangladeshi cities, as well as the BRAC birthing kits.
A BRAC birthing kit contains the necessary tools for a safe and sterile delivery: gauze, carbolic soap, a sterile plastic sheet to go over the mattress, a thread to tie the umbilical cord and a surgical blade to cut it. That’s it.
It might not be the most elegant solution, but it transforms any home into a safe and sterile place to have a baby. The cost to the consumer? A mere 40 cents.
By slimming the product down to the bare necessities, the birthing kit is simple to manufacture and distribute. At the Sanitary Napkin and Delivery Kits unit, a BRAC social enterprise, the kit costs 28 cents to make. It is then sold to BRAC’s Health Program for 32 cents, the same price at which it is sold to BRAC community health promoters, or shasthya shebikas in Bengali. These women are trained by BRAC and, as part of a range of products and services they provide, sell the kits for 40 cents to their community.
Since 1999, BRAC has manufactured more than 2.6 million of these.
Of course, it’s not enough to only have a birthing kit. A skilled attendant is still necessary to manage complications. You might think it’s time to send in the doctors, but BRAC learned that with a bit of training – and access to a network of qualified help should complications arise – women from the community can be trained to be skilled birth attendants.
BRAC has made headway in frugal innovation by providing products and services that are affordable, accessible, and – crucially – relevant to those being served. BRAC has already seen measurable results; meanwhile Bangladesh is well on its way to reducing maternal and child mortality by the 2015 deadline of the UN Millennium Development Goals.
this journal paper written 2003 clarifies work brac had been doing for a decade
upsated examples
The Manoshi Project at BRAC provides community-based maternal, neonatal and child health services for
6.9 million urban slum dwellers in 10 cities in Bangladesh. At the time of the project’s inception in 2007, this
population had high maternal and neonatal mortality. The first brac maternal delivery kits started production in 1998 and became incorporated in the enterprise that also manufactures sanitary towels from 2007
2 hours in 3-part dvd series on fazle abed/brac published 2006 by jeff skoll with ashoka
the 2005 pbs television series rx for survival featured sit fazle abed and brac prominently - we have footnoted the group of 15 global health champions the way pbs profiled them
- brac became increasingly celebrated (by gates foundation, soros foundation, jim kim and paul farmers pih) for global health innovations through decade 2002-12 (more recent frugal summaries as brac host annual forums - youtube example)
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pbs global health champions 2005
During production for Rx for Survival, we encountered a great number of individuals making a tremendous difference on the front lines of global health. Some work in remote rural communities; others create national or international public health initiatives. The following profiles of these global health champions are but a small sample of the many fine people, past and present, who have made public health their life's work.
Founder and Chairperson
BRAC (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee)
As leader of one of the most effective non-governmental organizations in the world, Abed has fought against poverty, disease, child mortality, and illiteracy by educating and empowering the poor women of rural Bangladesh.
World Health Organization, African Program for Onchocerciasis Control
River blindness, a condition caused by worms that damage the eyes to the point of blindness, affects 12 African nations. With determination and diplomacy, Amazigo has implemented a low-cost, sustainable strategy to distribute a medicine that may eradicate this disease.
Their shared love of motorcycles inspired a marriage and the founding of an organization that provides African health care workers with motorcycles to transport patients and deliver medical supplies.
Chairman and Founding Partner, BroadReach
Former Operations Manager, Botswana's Treatment Program for HIV/AIDS
Darkoh is building a nationwide health system from the ground up in Botswana through a public-private collaboration between the government of the small African nation and foundations.
Founding Director
Partners in Health
He has been described as "a man who would cure the world." Trained as a medical anthropologist and physician, the Robin Hood of global health has begged, borrowed, and stolen AIDS drugs to treat the poor in Haiti.
Professor and Health Policy Fellow, Emory University
Former Head, CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
In the 1970s he led the smallpox eradication campaign in India and later persuaded governments and drug companies to support polio eradication efforts. Today he is on the front lines of the battle to overcome the public's resistance to the use of vaccines.
Associate Executive Director
The Carter Center
For a long time, Hopkins was alone in his belief that Guinea worm disease could be eradicated. Through worldwide campaigns and community mobilization efforts, he now stands on the brink of its worldwide eradication.
Co-Founder, Partners in Health
Director of HIV/AIDS, World Health Organization
Supported in part by a MacArthur Foundation genius grant he received in 2003, Kim is on his way to achieving an ambitious goal: to get three million AIDS patients worldwide onto antiretroviral drugs by the end of 2005.
Volunteer
BRAC Community Health
A grassroots community health worker, Rohima never finished primary school, but today she monitors the health of 300 households in Bangladesh. She is among 33,000 women who have taken charge of their families' health and started microfinanced businesses.
This physician and nurse team treat 17,000 people in a refugee camp in western Chad. During their six-month mission they will deal with the threat of measles, poor sanitation, armed bandits, and Sudanese militias.
Director General
Mexican National Institutes of Health
Presented with a possible cholera epidemic, Sepulveda launched a massive clean-water program in Mexico, with an aggressive communications campaign to alert people to the ways the disease is transmitted.
Dean Emeritus and Professor
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Sommer discovered that children in Indonesia were dying of complications from nightblindness, a condition arising from vitamin A deficiency. His findings and identification of an inexpensive cure have dramatically reduced childhood mortality.
Founder and Board Chairman
The Population & Community Development Association
With humor and determination, Viravaidya has fought for family planning and safe sex in Thailand. Known as "the condom king," his effort to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS in Thailand has been remarkably successful.
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ck prahalad's classic the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid -eradicating poverty through profits was published in 2005 but must have taken several years to assemble
-its major cases came from india peru brazil mexico venezuela
main health cases were india's aravind eye care and india's prosthetic jaipur footand india's annapurna salt which targets solutions to idd iodine deficiency disorder; india's hindustan lever targeting of soap markets towards mitigation of diarrheal diseases
peru voxiva tech for early detection of infectious diseases
![Making Tuberculosis History: Community-based Solutions for Millions by [Md. Akramul Islam, Maria A. May, Faruque Ahmed, Richard A. Cash, Jalaluddin Ahmed, Abed Sir Fazle Hasan, Shehzad Noorani]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51B2VQpH9TL.jpg)
