Nobel laureate's noble idea to transform healthcare

New York: At the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting in New York City today, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, alongside President William Jefferson Clinton, announced the launch of the Grameen Nurse Institute, a new social business-based healthcare model that prioritises girls’ health and prosperity as fundamental to ensuring the health of future generations and accelerating economic progress.

This new vision of health for girls disrupts the current healthcare marketplace in Bangladesh with a new approach to health education and service. This financially sustainable and replicable model will help ensure that the health needs of the hardest-to-reach girls are met, while providing a pathway to labour-market opportunity.

Specifically, the Grameen Nurse Institute will both benefit girls – as recipients of healthcare services and information – and position them as the future healthcare workforce by addressing the shortage of nurses through innovative teaching techniques and recruitment of rural young women.

First of its kind

It will also help create a first-of-its-kind curriculum focused on the unique health needs of adolescent girls and a sustainable social business model with nurses as the central actors of the healthcare system.

"The health of girls and women is a true indicator of the health of a nation and of the next generation. If girls and women are not healthy, we are all at a disadvantage,” said Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder and managing director of Grameen Bank.

“Girls have been invisible to the healthcare system far too long; they must be at the center of it. By engaging girls and young women to provide quality health care for those around them, we can address girls’ health needs while creating productive livelihoods and a healthier society overall.”

In Bangladesh, 64% of girls are married before age 18. In addition, more than 1 million girls give birth each year.

Compounding these issues, there are currently three times as many doctors as nurses. The majority of doctors are located in urban areas, leaving significant gaps in service delivery based on both location (urban vs rural) and culture (given cultural issues associated with a male thoroughly treating a female).

As a result, 90% of births are delivered at home and more than 15 percent involve serious complications.

“We are excited to support the Grameen Nurse Institute, a breakthrough social business model that could transform the healthcare industry by positioning girls as not just the beneficiaries of services, but the agents of future change,” said Lisa MacCallum, Managing Director of the Nike Foundation.

“In our work so far at the Nike Foundation, we have learned that if you start with a girl, everyone else benefits: boys, women, men also. That’s the power of the girl effect.”

The institute is a prototype for a chain of future nursing colleges located in most district towns of Bangladesh.

Importantly, nursing provides a viable career path for rural adolescent girls that is driven by strong, unmet market demand. The Institute will offer different types of degrees to expand the supply of nurse practitioners.

Grameen Bank will supply educational loans and an infrastructure/ outreach network to recruit candidates. As a starting point, the daughters of Grameen's 7.6 million clients will be recruited as new students.

An existing network of Health Management Centers will serve as the primary means for employing graduated nurses, who will ultimately manage the Centers.

These will be the focal point of rural health service as centers of primary diagnostics, early detection and prevention, awareness building, and a link between urban doctors and rural patients.

As nurses expand their practices, they will recruit older girls from rural villages and train them to serve as health extension workers with a specific focus on the needs of adolescent girls.

These practitioners will provide house-to-house diagnostic and awareness services using mobile diagnostic tools.

The Nurse Institute supports the recommendations of a new health agenda developed by the Center for Global Development with funding from the Nike Foundation and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Start with a Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health offers substantive recommendations to the global health community that are designed to have transformative impact on both the healthcare landscape for girls and the economic well-being of their communities. Professor Yunus serves as a key advisor to the Agenda.

The Nurse Institute expects to train 1,251 students, reaching 50,000 adolescent girls in rural villages. The Nike Foundation will support the Institute with an initial $2 million in funding over five years.

About Grameen Healthcare

Grameen Healthcare aims to establish a sustainable health system in Bangladesh that will serve the health needs of all Bangladeshi income levels with low cost and high quality healthcare.

Grameen Healthcare will design low-cost, affordable health services for all of Bangladesh, especially the lowest income women and children, and sustain these services through social business.

In addition to existing social business partnerships with Danone and Veolia, Grameen Healthcare has recently announced partnerships with Pfizer, GE Healthcare, and the Mayo Clinic.

Grameen Healthcare continues to gather more new and innovative partners committed to harness best practices to build sustainable business models that can meet the unmet health needs of the poor in Bangladesh.