New partnership launched at GES will save up to 10,000 lives

Join Global Health on Follow Global Health on New partnership launched at GES will save up to 10,000 lives     Today, we are proud to share the launch of the Utkrisht Impact Bond — so named for the Hindi expression for 'Excellence' — the world's first Development Impact Bond (DIB) for health aiming to reduce the number of maternal and newborn deaths in Rajasthan, India. This DIB, the largest and most ambitious of its kind to date, was developed by partners including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), led by the Center for Accelerating Innovation and Impact (CII), Merck for Mothers, the UBS Optimus Foundation, PSI, Palladium, and HLFPPT.   DIBs are an innovative way of financing international development. They are 100 percent focused on outcomes and leverage private investor capital to address some of the world's greatest challenges. For the Utkrisht Impact Bond, the UBS Optimus Foundation has invested upfront funding, with the outcome payers – USAID and Merck for Mothers – paying this initial investment back after three years, only if a set of independently evaluated targets are met.   The partnership has the potential of reach up to 600,000 pregnant women and save the lives of up to 10,000 women and newborns over five years by improving the quality of private healthcare facilities that support a region of 75 million people. The State Ministry of Health in Rajasthan has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the partners to invest in and scale up the partnership should the pilot program be successful.   Administrator Mark Green, U.S. Agency for International Development, announcing the launch of the impact bond today said: "This results-based financing mechanism is groundbreaking in that it takes a business approach to development, while still targeting basic needs like improving the quality of care and private facilities.  By leveraging the assets and skills of a diverse group of partners across the public and private sectors, we are stretching our investments further while saving more lives." To learn more about this historic DIB, please visit this webpage. This DIB has also been featured by the Brookings Institute and Medium. To learn more about USAID's health work in Innovative Financing, please see CII's recent report, Investing for Impact.

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The KMS Project is sending these announcements on behalf of USAID's Bureau for Global Health. The KMS Project is located at 1300 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Suite 440, Washington DC 20004  • (202) 660-1860