Supporting provision of quality health care in rural communities through franchised health posts, low profit business model

One Family Health (OFH) is a US incorporated entity, registered in Rwanda as a private company, One Family Health (OFH) Rwanda as a low profit organization in a Public Private Partnership with the government of Rwanda through the Ministry of Health, working with ECOBANK Rwanda with loan funding from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The COUNTRY DIRECTOR, MAG-GIE CHIRWA, explains how OFH is working to improve access to essential medicines and quality health care at the grassroots using a sustainable business mod-el via a network of franchised Health Posts. The New Times’ Thomas Kagera writes: Owing to limited access by the rural poor to medical services, yet they carry the highest burden of diseases, OFH created a healthcare business model that supports health care providers to work and stay in remote and difficult-to-reach areas, reducing the strain on Government funds and resources in terms of salaries, accommodation and other health-based infrastructures. OFH Rwanda therefore aims at increasing access to basic healthcare, essential drugs, and prevention services for children and families in Rwanda using a sustainable franchising business model that maintains standards, scales geometrically, and achieves economies of scale. This objective in turn contributes to the intermediate out-come of “Increased prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the primary causes of mortality”. For the above mentioned outcome to be achieved, the community must be willing to use OFH HPs and subscribe to Community Based Health Insurance (CBHI). To date, OFH has supported establishment of health posts in; Gasabo, Kayonza, Gicumbi, Gatsibo, Nyagatare, Musanze, Rubavu, Nyabihu, Kamonyi and Burera and targeting Ngorero, Rulindo and Gisagara by the end of 2015.

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Supporting provision of quality health care in rural communities through franchised health posts, low profit business model