Despite substantial economic growth in Africa over the last few decades, access to affordable healthcare remains one of the greatest challenges to sustained economic development. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 11% of the world’s population, yet bears 24% of the global disease burden and commands less than 1% of global health expenditure. It also faces a severe shortage of trained medical personnel, with just 3% of the world’s health workers deployed in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The partnership shared vision is that in the future, economically sustainable and resilient health systems will be able to deliver affordable and accessible quality healthcare across Africa, while increasing access to financial products, supporting small business development and creating jobs.

To help achieve this, the partnership implemented a pilot in Zambia to explore and address the economic and financial barriers that currently exist in health systems across Africa. The partnership was designed to align with the Zambian government’s National Health plans. Hon Joseph Kasonde, Minister of Health, Zambia has said: “We are very pleased to support the Barclays GSK Program which aligns well with priorities in the Zambian National Health Strategic Plan.”

By the end of 2018 Barclays and GSK had together invested approximately £7m in financial support and on-the-ground resource over a 5 year period, with the ambitious goal of reaching 1 million out of the total population of 14 million people living in Zambia.

In Zambia, the partnership has set up the social enterprise, Live Well, in collaboration with CARE which tests a new route to market for GSK. Live Well recruits, trains and supports a network of Community Health Entrepreneurs (CHEs) in peri-urban and rural areas to promote healthcare and sell health impact products into underserved communities.

The partnership works closely with other organisations such as government, NGOs and civil society as they develop thinking and plans. GSK hopes that ultimately, by working together, such partnership can help unblock financial barriers and enhance government efforts to help increase access to affordable healthcare, ensuring the project is locally owned and self-sustaining.