After over a decade of programming in extremely low resource settings, World Health Partners is at a crucial crossroads. It is clear that programmes that solely focus on primary health delivery to impoverished communities through formal doctors face grave challenges to long-term sustainability. The main reason is price inelasticity: these communities are quite used to getting treated at local pharmacies or from informal providers at extremely low cost. While the treatment quality may be low, the communities do not seem unduly bothered about it since the morbidities often do not seem life-threatening.

This has entailed a rethink on our part. WHP is now starting to implement a strategy that will monetise the current soft and hard assets to the extent possible to create a revenue stream and depart from vertical programming to a more holistic, broader development-linked approach. This means healthcare will become a part of a basket of services with other constituents being education and livelihoods for the poor. The timing is apt as earlier this year the government extended WHP’s tax exempt status to cover education and economic upliftment.