Health Policy Plus Celebrates Public-Private Partnership Success as the Project Closes in Indonesia
The Health Policy Plus (HP+) project in Indonesia, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), held a webinar on March 15, 2022, highlighting its work to help the government of Indonesia develop policies to create and support public-private partnerships (PPPs) to benefit health coverage and services. HP+ was instrumental in helping the government set up the framework for non-infrastructure PPP regulations and the technical guidelines to govern them.
The webinar marks the project closing on March 31 in Indonesia, which has been operating since 2015 in its current iteration, building on the successes of two predecessor projects. The end-of-project celebration attracted close to 200 listeners and featured three presentations covering the role of PPPs for achieving health transformation, flexibility, and innovation and lessons learned from PPPs in Indonesia. These discussions also considered the concept of non-infrastructure PPPs, the policy environment enabling them, and the conditions that contribute to their success.
The centerpiece was a pilot PPP launched in late 2021 that supports a maternity waiting home in Gowa Province, South Sulawesi. The aim of maternity waiting homes is to improve maternal and newborn survival rates by providing a residence for pregnant women awaiting delivery—especially those women who live in remote areas far from facilities with skilled birth attendants or with the capacity to treat obstetric emergencies. However, district governments are often unable to fully fund the homes, many of which lack skilled staff. This pilot, which ends in April, brings in resources from private businesses and organizations who collaborate with the government to achieve common goals.
Pamela Foster, USAID health office director in Indonesia, was a featured speaker and expressed her endorsement of the PPP pilot success. “I express my great gratitude and appreciation toward the government of Indonesia taking the lead in PPPs and USAID being able to support this with the help of HP+,” she said. “The [pilot project] supports the MOH transition agenda, especially the health financing sector pillar. Partners play an unprecedented role in creating and shaping the lives of people and communities.”
She went on to commend the Gowa maternity waiting home as a good example that PPPs are feasible at a macro scale and at the subnational level. “It has the scale and resources to stand up to the complexity of the challenges and is a critical partner in not only driving improved outcomes but sustaining them. Thank you for bringing this pilot to life.”
Other speakers included the secretary general of the Ministry of Health in Indonesia; the acting head of the Center for Health Financing & Decentralization, Ministry of Health; a policy analyst from the Center for Health Financing & Decentralization; professors from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and the University of Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta; the chief of party from the USAID-funded Health Financing Activity-Indonesia; and the head of the Nahdlatul Ulama Welfare Foundation.
