2 | Scaling-Up Inclusive Healthcare Initiatives in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Assessing the Landscape of Innovative Approaches
Addressing the health burden of NCDs through inclusive initiatives
+
going toward NCDs in middle-income countries
+ Though low- and middle-income countries
are experiencing a rising prevalence of non-
communicable diseases like diabetes, cancer, and
of development assistance for health to these
+ If interventions that target NCDs are progressively
+ Many initiatives have not been successful because
they addressed only one part of the problem in
countries where health systems are often weak and
+ Inclusive businesses provide goods, services,
and livelihoods to people living at the base of the
pyramid through commercially viable and scalable
enterprises and bring poor and underserved
individuals into their value chain as suppliers,
+ Inclusive healthcare models are emerging, led by
startups, social enterprises, corporate ventures,
disease burden and improve the diagnosis,
Global health spending has been rising faster than the
pace of the global economy and accounted for 10% of
the global gross domestic product in 2017.
1
In low- and
middle-countries (LMICs), health spending is growing on
average even faster than in high-income countries
(6% vs. 4%),
2
and yet access to quality healthcare remains
insucient and largely inadequate for the 6.5 billion
people living there.
3
Despite over $41 billion spent in 2019
on healthcare in LMICs,
2
health challenges include a lack
of public health coverage/insurance, shortage of qualied
medical sta, late diagnosis, improper healthcare
infrastructure, quality product value chain and delivery
issues, and absence of health knowledge and awareness.
This is especially true for non-communicable diseases
(NCDs) where the weaknesses of prevention, diagnosis
and care are persistent. Despite 13% of health spending
going toward NCDs in low-income countries and 30%
in middle-income countries,
1, 4-6
these countries are
experiencing a rise in diseases like diabetes, cancer,
and heart and lung diseases (see Exhibit 1). In Africa,
while some headway has been made on communicable
conditions like tuberculosis and malaria — in part, due
to funding from governmental agencies, NGO’s and
bilateral private-public partnerships — and deaths
from communicable, maternal, perinatal and nutritional
conditions have declined from 5.7 to 5 million (from
61.4% to 56.0% of total deaths) 2010-2016, NCDs have
been a lesser focus of funding and have risen as a share
of deaths from 29.4% to 34% over the same period.
7
Indeed, across LMICs, NCDs now account for 46% of all
disease prevalence,
8
and LMICs now account for 57% of
NCD deaths globally, however only 1% of development
assistance for health (DAH) in 2018 was allocated to
NCDs in LMICs (see Exhibit 1).
For individual households with family members
aected by NCDs, the nancial burden is high, with
those in LMICs spending 12% of their eective income
on health — more than twice the percentage (5%) of
