Every country should have a strong health system

In ORTEC, Amref saw a partner that would be able to add real value to their organization. “We will always need strategic partners” stresses the Amref CEO. “With government and with companies. But for the long term, not just for one or two years.” You need to strengthen each other leveraging your core business and share an overall goal, she states. “And it is important to communicate about such a partnership to inspire people."

Bring healthcare closer

“In Africa, we are called ‘Amref Health Africa’”, explains Vermeulen. “For more than 63 years, Amref has been active in Africa – on the ground – to make sure that everyone gains access to good and affordable healthcare. We are Africa’s largest health organization. People in the Netherlands don’t usually know this; they still associate us with flying doctors. But nowadays, we reach people in other ways. By radio, by road,by mobile phones and by computers. One of the core tasks since the foundation of Amref is educating local people. There is a huge shortage of health staff on the African continent. Amref is supportive to what a government tries to achieve in its country. We do try to have local health caretakers acknowledged in the health system by governments. In a lot of African countries, they are seen as volunteer workers. Of course, we don’t do all this from our Dutch office: that’s what our African organization is for, with about 1500 employees in the different country offices. In the Netherlands, we mainly try to raise funds as well as awareness.”

Part of African communities

Data is crucial for the organization, especially in Africa. “In Kenia, we introduced the mobile platform ‘Leap’, which offers opportunities to educate and train health workers, giving peer support to each other, and contacting doctors. All the data that is submitted is important for governments on an aggregated level. When a mass cholera outbreak took place in a slum in Nairobi some years ago, the government asked us to inform all health workers involved to mitigate the risk for the rest of the over three million people in the city. Amref really is a part of the communities in Africa; we work with locals who know exactly how to address sensitive topics, like female genital mutilation. Even in Masai
communities. But it is a test of endurance.” As part of its campaign to stop this practice, Amref has worked with communities in Kenya and Tanzania to develop alternative rites of passage – for example, baths of milk and honey. Some16,000 girls have undergone these alternative rites, according to Amref.

Creating value together

Since 2019, ORTEC collaborates with Amref. Vermeulen: “ORTEC was looking to support an organization where they could add value leveraging their core business, with direct impact and where a difference could be realized for people. ORTEC doesn’t bring in money, but knowledge and expertise that we don’t possess. If there truly is a good match, you can create so much value together without money. It is a labor intensive process, because you need to search for that added value together. But if you find it, you can easily translate it into money: the expertise you gain, the costs you are going to save because of better processes and the improved efficiency in our organization. We have made the choice to start out in a country where the local Amref-board was interested in the cooperation with ORTEC. This turned out to be Ethiopia. But hopefully, in the future more offices can benefit: Tanzania, Uganda and Kenia could also really use this type of support. In Ethiopia, we are engaged in a project where we follow 500 women; annually we receive data from them. Do they have access to potable water? To clinical help when giving birth? In the few years we have been doing this, we should have organized the data collection better than we did. Because we need to be able to show what impact we have – on these women, and in general. These facts are going to assist us to plan the right interventions. ORTEC really helped us in organizing and analyzing all the data.”

Workforce effectiveness

The first project was completed in the Netherlands; for the second project about workforce effectiveness three ORTEC employees visited the Ethiopian office in March of this year. “Our Ethiopia office receives money from countries like the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden, but also from donors like the US government and the Gates Foundation. But project planning is quite difficult: they are constantly worrying how to deploy their teams as effectively as possible, because the budgets can fluctuate. ORTEC has already been offering advice to our local management team and suggested a forecasting model that gives insight in how many people per project are needed (based on available budgets, partners, and the amount of time) and how to allocate different roles and responsibilities. The Ethiopian management team is really happy with this tool and it is only a first step: ORTEC will finetune things in the Netherlands.”