Pharmacy on a Bicycle

A Tool for Action

Finding ways to provide affordable health care to the people who need it at the right place and time is a worldwide problem. Although various global funds have cooperated effectively to reduce maternal deaths and fight AIDS and other infectious diseases, countless people still die in developing countries from easily preventable illnesses and hazards. Effective measures include using mobile devices, modernizing testing and providing health care on a “franchise” basis. Despite these incremental improvements, obdurate challenges stymie attempts to provide basic health care, lessen the fragmentation of care and improve programs’ financial self-sufficiency.

This crisis demands a battle plan for improving and broadening health care at minimal cost. “The IMPACTS Approach,” a strategic response to this need, is the result of decades of investigation into developing countries’ rural and urban health care conditions, intense work in the trenches, and in-depth consultations with experts, officials and dedicated health care providers on three continents.The research that led to the Impacts Approach found that successful efforts often emerge from the collaboration...