Spending a week each in South Africa and Zimbabwe doing a pilot study for my new ESRC-funded project on ‘innovative spending in global health’ from the end of February to early March was indeed an eye and ear opener…for me and the various people I met and talked to.
I met and had discussions with people ranging from officials in ministries/departments of health, universities, civil society organisations with activities in the health arena, retail pharmacists, private health practitioners to people going about their everyday lives in cities and rural areas.
The issue of being creative and innovative in raising resources is a dominant one, not only in health, but all facets of human endeavour. In fact, there are all sorts of names and phrases in the local languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe to describe the innovative and entrepreneurial ‘wiring’ of those who are successful at accumulating resources. There is an unwritten consensus that once the resources are there, spending them in an impactful way will not be a problem.
It gave a bit of a jolt, therefore, when I asked the various people I spoke with whether they had stopped for a moment to think about innovative spending?
Read the whole story on the DPP Blog.
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