Task Force on the Private Sector

The private sector (defined as “non-government” and to include domestic for-profit, domestic not for profit, faith-based, multi-national corporate, foundations and universities) provides a significant proportion of health care services and products in the least and less developed countries of the world.

The private health sector in the developing world is poorly understood, best practices are not documented, promising initiatives are not scaled for broader application, and there is mistrust between the public and private sectors. Yet all acknowledge a comprehensive approach to the HRH crisis must involve the private sector. The private health sector in resource poor settings relies upon an enabling environment of civil society, financial and operational resources. How that interrelationship between society and the private sector operates and potentiates greater scaling of innovative responses to the HRH crisis is not understood. Scaling and implementation of innovative private sector responses will require greater understanding of this relationship.

The Alliance has agreed, staring in 2009, to support the development of a Task Force on private sector involvement in human resources for health will ensure that identified innovative private sector models will gain broader attention and implementation and scaling of these models into other locales can be facilitated. The overarching goal is to accelerate the scaling and cross-border movement of initiatives in the private health sector which can increase the supply of new workers, improve the efficiency and effectiveness of existing health workers and reduce the attrition of health workers out of the field of practice or movement out of region.