The Late Medical Credit Fund director East Africa Evelyne Gitonga. FILE PHOTO | NMG
The Kenyan health
fraternity has lost a key supporter. The late Evelyne Gitonga, regional
director of the
Medical Credit Fund (MCF) was laid to rest over the weekend. A banker by profession, Evelyne spearheaded MCFs regional goal of supporting small health enterprises and startups towards improving their quality by getting rid of the financing obstacles many faced. The MCF is dedicated to offering financial solutions to small and medium sized health facilities.
Medical Credit Fund (MCF) was laid to rest over the weekend. A banker by profession, Evelyne spearheaded MCFs regional goal of supporting small health enterprises and startups towards improving their quality by getting rid of the financing obstacles many faced. The MCF is dedicated to offering financial solutions to small and medium sized health facilities.
With slightly more than half
of all health services consumed being offered by the private sector
players, many often those in the bottom rungs of the provider levels,
struggle to secure funding to improve their services, infrastructure and
equipment needs.
This despite such items being crucial ingredients in their quest to improve the quality of medical services they offer.
Often
seen as high risk borrowers, such enterprises are caught in a vicious
underfunding–poor services cycle that sees most stagnate at one level of
quality of service provision for too long. Often with sub-optimal
interventions and outcomes for their patients.
A regular reader of the Business Daily newspaper and this column
in particular, we first interacted when she offered a counter opinion
from one of my articles. Her belief that pragmatic "soft-financing" to
the private sector on business terms and not philanthropy would stand
time ran counter to my ideas of funnelling donor funds to rural-based
health entrepreneurs as incentives to set up shop there.
Even
though a banker by career, she had an intimate understanding of the
constraints facing the health sector, more so for small enterprises and
startups in their formative years.
Her early
micro-finance banking background at Sidian Bank, formerly K-Rep helped
her champion the need for local banks to stop shunning health
entrepreneurs as "jua kali" and see their potential and social impact.
We
subsequently met years later in a conference I organised where she
spoke and presented evidence seeking to drum up support for healthcare
financing especially for the private sector players serving the bottom
of the pyramid groups.
Always eager to help, Evelyne
seemed to recognise both the urgency and need to solve the quality and
accessible healthcare puzzle.
Tirelessly
Where
obstacles seemed stacked against enterprises, she was described as
being ready to try see how to convince and convert outright "No’s" from
financier banks into "Maybe’s" and then into a "Yes" without removing
her banking glove whenever possible.
She was often
times trying to see where enterprises could be shepherded and guided to
improve their chances to access financing, but also merge their
expectations with the realities and rigours of the banking world.
Towards this end she and her team tirelessly worked to link banks with
entrepreneurs through risk-sharing
The health ecosystem
mourns her, but her loss inspires us to champion such efforts in our
quest to improve access and quality of healthcare locally.
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