Banyan Global operates seamlessly within four practice areas:
Private providers often work on the frontlines, providing priority public health services to the communities they serve. Despite their importance, they struggle to access the relationships and support they need to grow and improve their practices. In 2006, Banyan Global started organizing private heath sector trade fairs: an innovative strategy to connect private providers to the information, contacts, and inputs they need to improve their services.
In many developing countries, the private health sector is made up of a variety of disjointed groups, including small-scale providers. These groups frequently work on the frontlines, providing priority health services to the communities they serve. Yet despite their importance, they struggle to access essential relationships, market information and support.
Banyan Global began organizing health sector trade fairs in 2006 as a strategy to connect private providers to the information, contacts, and inputs they need to improve their services. Trade fairs are the first step to creating and strengthening long-term market linkages. These one-day events feature an exhibition hall, panel presentations, and time to network. Providers can meet with representatives from government agencies, provider associations, financial institutions, consulting firms, and medical equipment and pharmaceutical suppliers.
Panels cover topics like entrepreneurship, access to financing, and public-private partnerships. Public sector participation is key. At a trade fair in the Philippines, the Department of Health presented registration requirements for private midwives to open accredited nursing homes. In Uganda, the Ministry of Health discussed recent developments in a proposed plan to launch a social-insurance program.
Trade fairs are an innovative strategy, never before used in public health programming. Banyan Global surveyed providers before and after recent fairs in Uganda and learned that the events not only helped expand access to financing and increase contacts with suppliers, but also may have led to an increase in clients and family planning service provision.
Of the providers surveyed, 94 percent contacted a supplier they met at the fair and 89 percent contacted a financial institution; of those, 51 percent took a loan. Loans were used for purchasing medical supplies (87 percent), clinic expansion (28 percent), and buying equipment (15 percent).
The trade fairs also appear to have increased the delivery of family planning services. In the baseline survey, 84.9 percent of providers offered some type of family planning service, compared to 91.6 percent in the follow-up. In addition to an increase in family planning visits, survey participants also cited an increase in the number of total client visits per month: 52 percent experienced increased client visits.
Trade fair participants in Uganda say that the main benefits of attending are learning where to access finance (90 percent), finding new suppliers (89 percent), collecting practical business tips (53 percent), and making new professional contacts (20 percent).
Trade fairs are a promising strategy that merit more research. Based on Banyan Global's experiences to date, we believe they may be a cost-effective way to achieve public health impact through the private sector. Because trade fairs create connections between people they may offer some of the benefits of formal networks (improving market linkages and service provision) without some of the problems (limited examples of sustainability and significant financial investments by donors).
Banyan Global developed the private sector trade fairs under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Banking on Healthproject. We serve as the technical lead and are a subcontractor to Abt Associates.