Dhaka, Bangladesh
1672704000
Two days long Micro Health Entrepreneurship (MHE) workshop held (hybrid) on 3-4 January 2023 at Grameen Telecom Bhaban, Mirpur-1, Dhaka, Bangladesh. The objective of this workshop was to find out prospective MHEs in Bangladesh to provide affordable healthcare services to the unreached community to achieve SDG3. The workshop was organized by SocialTech Lab, Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering (ISEE), Kyushu University, Japan, and Global Communication Centre, Grameen Communications, Bangladesh. Entrepreneurship training was provided by the Uddog o Uddokta, Bangladesh. A total of 15 participants got the chance to join this workshop in 3rd intake. In 1st and 2nd intake total of 45 health workers are trained to become Micro Health Entrepreneurs. Participants came from different regions of Bangladesh, and they all have medical education backgrounds.
The following resource person conducted the relevant session on these two days: Dr. Ashir Ahmed (Associate Professor), Dr. Rafiqul Islam Maruf (Associate Professor), and Mr. Forhad Hossain (Researcher) from Kyushu University, Japan, Ms. Jahan Ruma Akhtar Shirin, CEO, Uddog o Uddokta. In this two days session, participants learned about PHC’s digital health system, digital health trends in Bangladesh, and basic entrepreneurship training. Health is one of the basic needs of human beings. Good health and well-being can make people more productive. Unfortunately, almost half of the world’s population is unable to receive the healthcare service they need. To ensure necessary health services to all we need to implement Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Achieving UHC in all countries requires strengthening the health systems with strong financial structures. The Covid 19 pandemic exemplifies the limitations of healthcare preparation and the importance of expanding healthcare financing. To meet the health workforce requirements of the SDGs and UHC targets, over 18 million additional health workers are needed by 2030. Investment in primary healthcare, recruitment of a sufficient health workforce, quality education and training for healthcare, complementary health insurance, and complementary medicine service is necessary for achieving UHC around the world. Government policy and regular monitoring also need to make continuous progress. Monitoring progress toward UHC should focus on 2 things:
• The proportion of a population that can access essential quality health services (SDG 3.8.1)
• The proportion of the population that spends a large amount of household income on health (SDG 3.8.2)
There are many challenges to achieving these goals in developing countries. Government and Non-Government organizations are taking many good initiatives to improve the health system and it is going better day by day. But, still, it is challenging to achieve the UHC goal by 2030. The rapid transformation of digital technology is helping to make significant improvements to the healthcare system. We are introducing the MHE model to work with Portable Health Clinic (PHC), which is a known digital health system and has experimental results working in developing countries. The Portable Health Clinic can ensure affordable primary healthcare services to all communities. The MHE model can make sure the sustainability of this initiative by spreading it in a business model at the community level. Portable Health Clinic has already been experimented with in 8 developing countries including Bangladesh, now we are planning to experiment MHE model with PHC in those countries. This workshop is part of this initiative.
Micro Health Entrepreneurship (MHE) is a business model to make health entrepreneurs at the community level work for quality healthcare services. The person who has an entrepreneurial mindset, passion, feelings, and courage to take challenges to create a significant social impact can be a Micro Health Entrepreneur. An entrepreneur has a strong mind to take on challenges and serve the community with innovative efforts. These health entrepreneurs can take this challenge to provide health services to all unreached communities and to make this service continue for the good health and well-being of the specific community. If a person has health education and a license to provide healthcare services (like medical assistants, nurses, and community health workers) he/she can provide PHC health services on own. He/she can work as a health entrepreneur as well as a health worker. If that person does not have health education or license but has the mindset and preparation to conduct this service, he/she can employ a health worker to conduct the service and the entrepreneur can play the role only for business management. All health entrepreneurs will get basic training to provide primary healthcare and entrepreneurship. In developing countries, it is very challenging for the government to recruit a health workforce and fulfill the necessary demand. Also, performance monitoring and evaluation are very challenging for the government. Private sector health service providers mainly focused on secondary health services and urban base health services. Also, they are mostly focused on profit maximization. In MHE model it encourages people to focus on social impact, not on profit maximization. Standard business profit will make for the business sustainability, but it should not be profit greedy. Entrepreneurs will also try to understand the demand and situation of the community and based on that he/she will take strategy to deliver the service, they can lead, can modify their business, and they can be innovators to provide primary healthcare services at the root level. To implement the MHE model for the first time in Bangladesh we arranged this workshop to select highly motivated people who are ready to start this business and take on the challenges.
The workshop was conducted in two broad categories in seven sessions: a) MHE Sessions: Concept of Micro Health Entrepreneurship, Startup funding for MHEs, How to start an entrepreneurship, Business Plan Preparation b) PHC and Digital Health Sessions: Digital health service prospect and challenges in Bangladesh, PHC digital health system, PHC service demonstration (primary health checkup to all trainee) SDG 3 is aiming “To ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. Among 9 targets of SDG 3, target 3.8 is mentioned as “Achieve universal health coverage”. UHC is necessary for sustainable and inclusive growth and the main point of UHC is to ensure quality health service for all as they need without experiencing financial hardship. Bangladesh and other developing countries are struggling to achieve UHC, although it is progressing in a positive trend the achievement score is not satisfactory. Out-of-pocket expenditures are so high here, the number of the health workforce is not enough, there are lacking of policy and implementation, interoperable health information systems are still not practiced widely, and there are infrastructures to provide basic health services, but all are not functioning, resources in the health sector are not used properly, people are not aware to maintain primary healthcare, rural people cannot have enough access to quality healthcare service. There is a need for alternatives to accelerate access to quality health services. Micro Health Entrepreneurship (MHE) could be a good solution to make available quality health services for all in a sustainable way. MHE with a digital health system like PHC might be helpful to overcome the existing challenges of UHC. Youth is the largest group of the population of Bangladesh, they are ready to take on challenges. They are ready to become MHEs and want to contribute to achieving UHS they just need proper support and guidance.
