Pilot HealthCLIR Assessment Released

The U.S. Agency for International Development BizCLIR project is pleased to announce the publication of the “HealthCLIR Pilot Diagnostic: Philippines” report. This report contains the final analysis from the pilot-test of the Health Business Climate Legal and Institutional Reform (HealthCLIR) business environment diagnostic tool. HealthCLIR is a tool that rapidly identifies legal and institutional barriers to effective private sector participation within a country’s health system. The HealthCLIR Philippines assessment activity applied this new tool to identify barriers to private sector participation broadly throughout the health system within the context of the government’s FOURmula One for Health strategy.


President of Integrated Midwives Association of the Philippines, Cebu Chapter outside of her Philhealth-accredited birthing home. Photo by Sarah Ezzy, Booz Allen Hamilton.

The Government of the Philippines has demonstrated an interest in business environment improvement for the health sector. The Department of Health desires to engage the private sector on endemic issues such as low investment in health infrastructure in certain regions, inequitable distribution of health services, and high drug and medical device prices. Despite government engagement, significant constraints remain to private sector participation throughout the health system.

Broad devolution of regulatory and budgetary decision-making to the local government units has created redundant, and sometimes contradictory, regulations across municipalities, creating barriers to effective private sector participation. Drug and medical device supply chains are constricted by extraordinary horizontal integration at nearly all points along the supply chain, with the lack of competition increasing costs for health products. Thirty years of economic development strategy centered on exporting talented medical practitioners for remittances has proven effective, yet has taken a toll on the incentives for local medical practitioners who remain. These issues, and many others, were identified through over 110 meetings with key stakeholders across the Philippines over a two-week period, and are discussed in greater detail in the report.

The report provides the Government of the Philippines, local stakeholders, the USAID Philippines mission, and other interested parties with an in-depth appraisal of barriers for private sector participation, as well as actionable reform activities to address priority constraints. The HealthCLIR Philippines pilot diagnostic identified 58 distinct reform opportunities, ranging from short-term, immediate impact activities to strategic, yet transformative, opportunities for sustainable impact. If a reform agenda can be developed through meaningful dialogue between the private sector, the public sector, and regulatory institutions, the Philippines can serve as a role model for health business environment reforms throughout the region.

To access the report, please use the following link: HealthCLIR Pilot Diagnostic: Philippines.

WIPO collaborates with USAID, other donors to highlight IP and development

For Mr. Tadesse Meskela and members of his Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union (OCFCU), strengthened intellectual property (IP) rights in Ethiopia have brought noticeable increases in sales of one of the country’s most important exports. Since the introduction of fair trade trademarks and clearer processes for registering Ethiopian coffee trademarks, the OCFCU sales value per year has increased from $180 thousand in 2001 to over $20 million in 2008. The benefits of these increased earnings have spilled into other sectors of Ethiopian society, recently allowing the cooperative union to build schools and a health post.

Mr. Meskela was one of several presenters at WIPO’s recent “Conference on Building Partnerships for Mobilizing Resources for Development”, held in Geneva on November 5th and 6th. The international conference was organized to help improve understanding among the donor community of the key developmental role of IP, encourage their support for IP-related development projects, and improve access by developing countries, particularly least developed countries (LDCs) and countries in Africa, to donor funding for such projects. By bringing together senior level representatives of developing countries and organizations such as USAID, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the U.K.’s Department for International Development, as well as WIPO’s existing donors, it created an ideal opportunity to begin dialogue and partnership building. WIPO is looking to expand beyond its traditional Member State donors to the mainstream donor community and the private sector and charitable foundations for partnerships. Indeed, these groups were represented at the Conference. “The Conference was an excellent forum for showing the importance of IP for development” said Charles A. Schwartz, Senior Commercial Law Reform Advisor at USAID, who also presented at the event.

For additional details on the conference, please follow the link to WIPO's website: http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2009/06/article_0011.html. For more information on WIPO's work and other opportunities to collaborate with WIPO, please contact Joe Bradley, Head of the Program Management and Performance Section at joe.bradley@wipo.int.