Our managing partner Dr. Jaemin Park made a trip to Basilan island at the southwestern tip of the Philippines near Malaysia at the invitation from Zuellig Family Foundation. Here are our observations on rural health for women and infants.
BARRM (Bangsamoro Autonomous Region)in Muslim Mindanao is the autonomous region for Muslims in the southwestern end of the Philippines, nearing Sabah of Malaysia. Historically this region was under the rule of Sulu Sultanate. With the martial law under previous Marcos administration, local Muslims began rebellion to fight for local autonomy.
Since then, the region underwent armed conflicts for decades and only by 2022, the conflict resolved. Now the region is recovering and slowly reopening the economy to investors. This area used to be the base of ISIS in Southeast Asia. The island of Basilan is 1.7x larger than Singapore. The island has 11 municipalities, where some of them do not have a single doctor. Island-wide there about ~30 doctors. 1 General hosptial, 2-3 district hosptials, rural health units (RHUs) and barangay health stations (smallest health service unit).
Zuellig Family Foundation focuses on two pillars, adolescent pregnancy and infant growth (preventing stunting). In the Philippines, the national average of adolescent pregnancy is around 34%, while the stunting is 20%. Thanks to the work of ZFF over the last 4 years, there have been steady decline of adolescent pregnancy and stunting. However, some areas still needed improvement, as there were barriers due to cultural practices (early teenage marriage of some Muslims), lack of sexual education, contraceptive stock-out, and contraceptive burden falling mostly on women (less than 2% condom or other contraceptive usage from men) contributing to persistent teenage pregnancy. The burden fell mostly on women, with some teenage mother undergoing sterilization.
Contraceptive burden fell mostly on women, with less than 2% contribution from men (condom and others modalities)
Stunting of infant growth is another major problem. They managed to bring down the stunting to 9-15%. However, many teenage pregnancies are prone to malnutrition and they still persist.
Some municipalities receive food stamps, worth 3,000 Philippine pesos (~$60) a month. The island food supply is a major issue as they do not have sustainable crops, and water supply is a challenge for many islands. The lack of awareness on importance of infant nutrition is another contributor.
The lack of proper birth facilities, shortage of midwives, barrier to access to advanced care (for high risk pregnancies, etc.) are other problems to address. Shortage of manpower, starting from doctor, nurses, midwives, down to barangay health workers (BHW). A lot of the initiatives are dependent on the volunteers (population volunteers, peer educators, etc.) for various initiatives and some of these works are given honorarium but mostly not compensated.
Bottom line, rural health is primarily a public sector initiative. If we want to make a sustainable model for rural health, we need to find out different sources of monetization and financing. We do have a lot of investment interest for women, children and rural health. However, a lot of the opportunities are over-simplified and some of these you sometimes wonder if it trickles down to the right audience at all. Of course, it is equally challenging to invest in these kinds of raw opportunities from the investor point of view if they are not positioned and packaged in a way that is acceptable from the investor perspective.
It is important to have sight of what really matters on the ground, but also important to understand how it will return financial and social return for the investor
We at Heal Venture Labare building a regional network to allow deeper access for investors and startups, while at the same time designing venture building thesis that generates true impact while also meeting the investor expectations. We are focusing on healthcare access and affordability, our members working on different fronts that fit their conviction, including biomedical innovation, as well as rural, women’s health and leadership.
