Events Honor President Kikwete and other Vital Tanzanian Partners
Two events in New York and London this month highlighted the Touch Foundation's close relationship with the Tanzanian and US governments as well as with private sector partners engaged in Tanzania.
The gatherings represented the growing momentum behind the Touch Foundation's plan to forge an exciting set of public-private partnerships for healthcare delivery and health worker training in the Lake Zone region of Tanzania.
On Sept. 23, the Touch Foundation and Barrick Gold co-hosted a dinner honoring His Excellency President Jakaya Kikwete of the United Republic of Tanzania. This marked the second occasion that Touch has hosted President Kikwete in New York.
President Kikwete, who was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, remarked: "I came here to say thank you, Touch Foundation. I came here to ... to ask all of you to continue to assist Touch Foundation. Build the capacity so that they can help us...Train the doctors who are going to save so many lives - the women who are in need, the children who are dying of malaria, the many people who are dying of diseases that can be cured, diseases that can be eliminated."
Click here to watch to the President's speech on the challenges of scaling up healthcare in Tanzania and value of working with the private sector to develop innovative solutions.
At the dinner, Touch Foundation President Lowell Bryan noted that President Kikwete is demonstrating great leadership in Tanzania by prioritizing access to healthcare for all citizens - including in the most rural and hard to reach areas. The Tanzanian Government has pledged to build hundreds of new clinics and health centers to ensure that no one is more than five kilometers from medical care. He has also been credited for steering the Tanzanian government to significantly increase the country's health budget.
In addition to President Kikwete, the Sept. 23 event featured the following UN and government officials: Ambassador Eric Goosby, US Global AIDS Coordinator; Rajat Gupta, Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the UN and former Chair of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria; H. E. Augustine Mahiga, Permanent Representative of Tanzania to the UN; Ambassador Ombeni Sefue, the Ambassador of Tanzania to the US; and Honorable Professor David Mwakyusa, Tanzania's Minister of Health and Social Welfare. Representatives from foundations, The New York Times, nonprofit organizations and private companies working in Tanzania were also in attendance.
A running theme throughout the evening was the potential synergy in bringing together nonprofit, public and private sector actors to achieve more efficient and wider access to healthcare in Africa and in particular, in the Lake Zone region of Tanzania. Jeff Sturchio, President and CEO of the Global Health Council, spoke to this issue when he stated, "One of the things that's so novel and innovative about the work that the Touch Foundation has been doing is that they've taken a private sector perspective on understanding how to measure the returns on investment...They've taken [an] analytical approach to systems development and systems analysis to really understand how to create the results that are necessary to improve health in Tanzania in this case and by extension, to other countries, and then by creating a partnership that brings the complimentary skills and resources that are required to solve those problems together, they've actually been able to accomplish more through those partnerships than the partners could do on their own...That's really the big payoff for public-private partnerships and why they're so important."
The Touch Foundation event in London hosted by the Tanzanian High Commission at their Embassy on Sept. 30 demonstrated our growing presence on the other side of the Atlantic. Touch Foundation Executive Director Lee Wells shared early plans for a new partnership with Touch, McKinsey & Co and the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in Tanzania. This event marked the first in a series of gatherings intended to stimulate a fundraising community in the UK, building towards a large fundraiser to take place in the spring of 2010.
Attendees included H.E. Mwanaidi Sinare Maajar, the Tanzanian High Commissioner; Dominic Barton, Managing Director of McKinsey & Co; Dominic Casserley, Managing Partner of the UK and Middle East McKinsey & Co Offices; Hugh Verrier, Chairman of White & Case LLP; and Rupin Rajani, Chief Executive Officer of Rajani Industries Limited.