Shaky private sector affects funding of health projects

Journalists follow presentations during Editor’s Breakfast Meeting at the Benjamin Mkapa Foundation’s offices in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday. PHOTO | CORRESPONDENT

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Leaders of the private sector have expressed concern over their involvement in the economy

Dar es Salaam. Programmes that benefitted from public sector funding have not been spared from economic challenges affecting the sector.

The programmes include those that promote community health services.

Leaders of the sector, which employs a significant chunk of the country’s labour force and contributes handsomely to the national gross domestic product (GDP), have more than once voiced concerns on what they have termed as the sidelining of the private actors in managing the economy.

Sustainability of the Benjamin Mkapa Foundation, a local non-government organisation which complements development efforts of the government in the health sector, is now in jeopardy.

Established in 2006, the Foundation reinforces response to HIV/Aids and related health conditions together with exploration of evidence-based solutions on human resource for health.

So far, 18,500 people have been reached at the community-based HIV testing programmes in Shinyanga, Simiyu, Tabora and Katavi regions. By June 2018, the Benjamin Mkapa Foundation had accomplished by 100 per cent its five year set targets for the construction of new health staff houses in the country. Throughout this time, the private sector was instrumental in the implementation of the organisation’s projects.

But a shaky private sector means less money for the organistion, with the chief executive officer of the Foundation, Dr Ellen Mkondya-Senkoro, associating the situation with the circumstances facting the sector. For example, the private sector contributed only Sh740.5 million (7 per cent) in fundraising to the Foundation for 2017/2018 down from Sh2.6 billion (26 per cent) in 2015/2016 (the Foundation did not organise a fundraising for 2016/2017.

“The fast-changing business, political and social economic environment within the country and globally remain a key challenge to [the Foundation’s] works,” said Dr Mkondya-Senkoro in her presentation during Editor’s Breakfast Meeting yesterday at the Foundation’s offices.