Vaccination

Powering Healthcare

This programme provides the solutions needed by governments and their partners to increase investment in health facility electrification efforts.

    Context

    For too long, a lack of reliable power has prevented people in underserved parts of Africa and Asia from accessing the quality healthcare they need. Despite energy being a key input for positive health outcomes, many rural clinics across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are completely without or have irregular power supply.

    Distributed renewable energy presents an opportunity to provide clean, reliable, quickly dispatchable and cost-effective electricity to health facilities. But there are several current barriers to connecting more health facilities with renewables. These include a lack of data on the precise energy needs of health facilities and finance, and a mixed track record on long-term sustainability.

    Ensuring health facilities have reliable electricity saves lives. Bringing governments and the health, energy and development sectors closer together to develop solutions is even more pressing now, during a global pandemic.

    Our Powering Healthcare programme equips governments and their development partners with the evidence and solutions needed to achieve universal electrification of health facilities by 2030. It is supported by different organizations, including:

    Activities

    • Build the evidence base for powering healthcare facilities, particularly related to sector intelligence/mapping and impact research (health impact and multiplier effect)
    • Raise awareness and educate stakeholders about the need and opportunity to provide better health services by powering healthcare facilities
    • Develop new ideas and solutions that address critical barriers to the wide-scale and sustainable adoption of distributed clean energy solutions in health facilities such as scalable and sustainable business models, policy and planning, and technical standards and quality assurance frameworks
    • Strengthen the cooperation and knowledge exchange among health and energy players, at both the global and country level.
    • Provide technical assistance and strategic advisory to governments and their development partners in priority countries to support ongoing and planned large-scale health facility electrification programmes.

    Projects and initiatives