Sustainable Health for Everyone
This entry has been selected as a finalist in the
How to Improve Health for All competition.
The problem is that the population in Jujuy has no access to a good health system. The business of health workers and companies is paradoxical because the profit is in the illness. The aim of our organization is to change this paradigm. The beneficiaries of this programme are about 2 million women living not only in the cities but also in rural areas, who don?t have any social security system.
About You
Location
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Your idea
Focus of activity
Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Start Year
1989
Positioning in the mosaic of solutions
Main barrier addressed
Cultural taboos and health illiteracy
Main principle addressed
Design inclusive systems
This system can?t be sectorized, this system is a complement of all barriers and principes already mention on the mosaic diagram.
Name Your Project
Sustainable Health for Everyone
Describe Your Idea
The problem is that the population in Jujuy has no access to a good health system. The business of health workers and companies is paradoxical because the profit is in the illness. The aim of our organization is to change this paradigm. The beneficiaries of this programme are about 2 million women living not only in the cities but also in rural areas, who don?t have any social security system.
Innovation
Description of health product/service offering:
The problem is that the population in Jujuy has no access to a good health system. The business of health workers and companies is paradoxical because the profit is in the illness. The aim of our organization is to change this paradigm. The beneficiaries of this programme are about 2 million women living not only in the cities but also in rural areas, who don?t have any social security system.
Description of innovation:
Our system earns money with health promotion and care. We have upgraded family and rural doctors over specialists, and this upgrading involves not only the economic aspect but also doctors self-esteem. The methodology we use is based on respect and affection towards the people in the communities that need it most because they are excluded from the system. With the tangible elements of medicine (i.e. check-ups, tests, scanning, X rays, medicines, dentistry), we finance the intangible processes, such as education and health promotion. We do not expect consultants who work in centralized offices to come to us, but we do what the community requires.
Operational model:
The organization is focused on all the areas that have something to do with health, from environmental care to the possibility of access to high technology in low level communities. We have institutional alliances with companies, colleges and NGOs from all over the country, but the most important is the alliance and trust of the communities we work with.
Human resources:
In this initiative 50 people work directly and on an indirect way the leaders and representatives of excluded communities, both in rural and urban areas. The partnerships profile is based on a system that leaves out the egocentrism of health workers, especially doctors. The vision of our team is to transfer all the information to the community, although this certainly produces a loss of the power that doctors have over the patients.
Key operational partnerships:
We have generated a lot of alliances with companies that go from pharmaceuticals to financial and services.We have a strategic alliance with the Medical School of Tucum?n, the most important one on a regional level. We also have alliances with non governmental organizations and national and international foundations, but the most important is the alliance we have with all the community and with all the people who use our system.
Impact
Financial Sustainability:
- Fees charged to clients?: No
- How do you assure affordability?: We have in place a Membership Card called "Ser Cegin". Membership Card SerCegin to have access to a health system: The Province of Jujuy has 700,000 inhabitants. 60% of that population doesn?t belong to any health system and therefore they do not have access to medicines. These 420,000 people are potential clients of the company. The membership card has an annual cost f 4 euros. To buy and use the card the person pays 2 euros and he/she i sable to use the card for 6 months. After this six-month period, the user does not have to renew the card if he/she does not need it any more.This is a free-choice system; it is not compulsory to renew the card. The card can be renewing when the user needs a new health service.There are no extra charges for not using the card.
- Earned incomes as a percentage of operating costs: 80
- Other funding sources: Our system is totally self- sustainable, Our bests sources are taking from the belonging card "SER cegin". Thus, the person has access to a primary health system where the cost of a medical appointment is of 1.4 euros. Dentists appoitments are free.From the first appointment onwards, the patients can have access to different check- ups for their diagnosis and treatments (e.i. Xrays, echographies, medicines, etc.).All these check-ups have a cost that is from 40% to 60% less than the cost thay have in the market. In our offices we can have 1,000 consultations per day with an average income of 6 euros per person (generated by the value chain) Tus, generating 120,000 euros per month and 1,440,000 euros per year plus 400,000 euros per year generated by the membership Card Ser Cegin.
- Strategy for long-term sustainability: Our Strategy is to work with the low-resources people. They adhere and buy the service because they are respected as patients. The main reason why they choose us is because ?they feel we not only respect them but also their time". Our customers are not merely patients, they are human beings with distressing problems that must be solved in an affectionate and competent way.
Current and Future Impact:
- Total number of clients: 80.000
- Clients in the past year: 10.000
- Percentage of low-income clients: 60%
- Impact: In Argentina our system is aligned with the Objectives for the Millennium of the United Nations and we believe our system could be adapted to different places on a global level. In our area of influence (North West Argentina), those favoured by our system are about 1 million people.
- Overall "market": Expected number of customers in years 1+2 80,000 Estimate of investment needed in a year 1+2 (euros) 400,000 Own investment 60% I expect to make profits within 1 year My business model and how I will generate profit. My potential customers and why they will buy from me.
Scaling up strategy:
Stage of the initiative:
Mature stage.
Expansion plan:
Our expansion plan for the next three year is reached to the 3.000.000 followers and achieve that in other needed countries.
Origin of the initiative:
I started as a volunteer in the Andean region.After that lonely beginning(nobody from the local establishment I belonged to was happy about my job. They insisted that poor women were only good to work as maids)Despite what they thought, after 20 years of hard work I have been able to involve more than 50 organization from my area in working in Sustainable Development in Argentina in partnership with Swiss entrepreneur Stephan Scmitheiny. From that experience I decided to found a sustainable organization that had a social aim but one that was at the same business oriented. The objective of this organization is to provide health to the weakest link in the chain ?the non-white, illiterate native woman who survives with less than a dollar per day and who has an average of 10 children of whom 40% die? I am absolutely convinced that we cannot think of any type of development without health.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
Policy change:
In the first place, a complete change in the university curricula is needed. Our universities educate doctors for the first world and high technology, without considering that developing countries need doctors trained for primary health care and rural medicine. The other fundamental change is to modify a model that prevailed the last 20 years, that has utterly shown its incapacity to solve health problems, in spite of the enormous budgets corruptly run by trade unions. And the last fundamental issue is the empowerment of the people, to convey the idea that they are the first and only responsible to care for their own health.
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| 358 weeks ago Anonymous said: Felicitaciones!!! Admiro profundamente tus deseos de participar en el cambio que est? sucediendo en el mundo. Celebro que trabajes en ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 358 weeks ago Anonymous said: Estimado Juan. Seria un gusto ayudarlos en lo que pueda.Mi e mail es jgronda@arnet.com.ar. Lo nuestro es de un constante aprendizaje. ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
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