Banking on Health Hosts Midwife Business Fairs in the Philippines
In the Philippines and elsewhere, private midwives are constrained by a number of factors that limit the growth of their practices and their ability to improve the quality of their services. The private midwife sector is often fragmented and dominated by small practices that are isolated and lack access to market information, business linkages and technical health updates. The Banking on Health (BoH) project identified an opportunity to address some of the constraints of private midwives by sponsoring business trade fairs. The trade fairs provide a venue for midwives to access representatives of business and financial services, meet equipment and pharmaceutical suppliers, and receive technical updates and information from the Department of Health.
Five business fairs were held in locations throughout the Philippines (Manila, Davao, Cebu, Iloilo, and Pampanga) in late 2006. A total of 1,216 midwives attended the fairs, as well as dozens of pharmaceutical companies, financial institutions, and equipment suppliers. The purpose of the midwife fairs was twofold; first to create awareness, inspiring and motivating midwives to pursue or expand their private practice businesses; and second, to develop linkages among the midwives, financial institutions, technical providers, and commercial health suppliers.
In August 2006, the first midwife business fair took place in Manila, with over 600 midwives attending. An entire day of events and activities included a keynote speech by the Department of Health Secretary Francisco T. Duque, seminars on midwife accreditation and licensing requirements, presentations of local midwife “success stories," presentations by microfinance institutions and banks, and exhibitions by pharmaceutical and health-marketing companies.
The high demand to attend the fairs and the active participation of private practice midwives served to raise awareness on behalf of the DOH, suppliers, financial institutions and existing USAID projects of the size of the private practice midwife sub-sector and its technical, business support, and financial needs. The success of the events in the Philippines has prompted BoH to replicate this activity in additional countries.
The objectives of the BoH project in the Philippines are to 1) improve midwives’ financial management abilities, including planning and managing savings, and access to external financing, and 2) strengthen financial institutions’ receptiveness and ability to provide timely, appropriate small business loans to private midwives. The BoH strategy seeks to promote the growth of private practice midwife businesses at all stages of development. This strategy is designed to use resources prudently to produce short-term results that have a potential for longer-term sustainability.
