Citigroup chooses Touch for $5 million gift
Citigroup’s Board of Directors announced it would donate $5 million to a charity of Sandy Weill’s choice as a retirement gift in his honor.
Citing his years of dedication to helping the world’s poorest gain access to health care and his five decades of service, Citigroup CEO, Charles Prince, said that ‘Sandy raised the bar to unprecedented heights and gave us a company uniquely well-positioned for continued success’. At a dinner ceremony held at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sandy praised the inspirational example set by Fr. Dr. Peter Le Jacq and selected the Touch Foundation in recognition of our efforts to establish a world-class medical school in Mwanza, Tanzania. Sandy and the Touch leadership are in the process of determining how the funds will be allocated, which will be used to support the programs of the Bugando University College of Health Sciences. We are deeply grateful for Citigroup’s and Sandy Weill’s continued commitment to Touch. Our strategic vision will require a considerable investment as we expand our programs, and this latest donation is an important step in the right direction for creating a center of excellence for healthworker training in sub-Saharan Africa.
McKinsey goes to Tanzania
McKinsey & Company has been a long-time supporter of the Touch Foundation. The Firm provides us with office accommodation and access to over one hundred and fifty valuable McKinsey volunteers, who began working even before the foundation’s official incorporation. In November of last year, McKinsey commenced a pro bono study to develop a strategy for addressing the global shortage of health care workers in Tanzania. The study’s findings were discussed at the Touch symposium on June 5. The following are excerpts from the McKinsey team’s journal of its field visit to Tanzania and its subsequent analysis.
Getting started
The scarcity of human resources for health (HRH) is the chief bottleneck to improving healthcare outcomes in the developing world. We are eager to help Touch develop its strategy for increasing the capacity of healthcare workers in Tanzania. The goal: to build a working model in a single geographical area as a model for other countries.
From ministry corridors to hospital wards
Since we have limited time in Tanzania, we want to learn as much as possible while we’re here. We spend the first couple of days meeting with government officials and NGOs in the capital, with one team member courageously hiding the side effects of an unfortunate encounter with local food, and the other proudly displaying a new pair of Tanzanian shoes bought after he arrived with nothing but green sneakers to his name. Our next stop is Mwanza, where we will visit BUCHS and the adjacent hospital, BMC.
We collect data, conduct interviews, and refine our starting hypothesis. We initially assumed that specialists would be a luxury in a place where generalists, non-doctor clinicians, and nurses are in such shortage. But we quickly realize that for the system as a whole to function well, the Tanzanian pyramid of health care workers must be reshaped, with more highly trained doctors at the top to supervise and train the lower-skilled cadres.
The study is shaping into three distinct work streams. Iain works hard with BUCHS staff to help them manage the short-term challenges created by the medical school expansion and the planned integration of the Institute of Allied Health Sciences, which trains paramedical workers such as nurses, pharmacists, and lab technicians.
Rita works on an estimate of the actual shortage of healthcare workers by cadre, and on measuring the impact of addressing the shortage. Adding a doctor will contribute to the health and the economy of Tanzania – the question for us is how to quantify that impact.
Elya investigates possible strategies for Touch, including expanding the medical school in Mwanza, but considering new schools sometime down the track. He is also looking into how Touch can best train and mobilize nurses and clinical officers for deployment in rural Tanzania.
Ari shuttles between Dar and Mwanza, coordinating the team and helping to liase with both the Tanzanian government and the donor community.
Putting it all together for maximum impact
Back in New York, the team room on the 29th floor looks a little less exciting than the lakefront in Mwanza. But we have a lot of work ahead to develop the strategy, evaluate its costs, and estimate its likely impact.
We realize that much can be done by working with existing schools to increase their training capacity. Instead of simply building new schools from scratch, we propose that Touch should look at developing management support capabilities in-country and using that capability to assist the four other medical schools to scale up their training capacity. We calculate that with this strategy, Touch can help to double training capacity in Tanzania over the next ten years – saving literally thousands of lives.
On March 20, we presented our findings to the Touch Board in a six-hour experience not to be missed. Since the Board president and our lead McKinsey director are the same person, the entire engagement was somewhat unique! Our study showed that the shortage of human resources is an urgent problem. We genuinely believe Touch’s new strategy will contribute to the solution.