Last week during the Energy Action Days of the High-level Dialogue on Energy, a group of 14 organizations, including SEforALL, launched a Multilateral Energy Compact for Health Facility Electrification.

This Energy Compact was developed to spark action on healthcare electrification at a critical time. An estimated one in four primary healthcare facilities in Sub-Saharan Africa lack access to power, with many more health facilities suffering from debilitating power outages. A lack of reliable electricity for vaccine cold chains threatens to undermine the global response to COVID-19 and continues to delay vaccinations in developing countries.

The new Energy Compact puts forward a sectoral target of 25,000 health facilities to be electrified with clean and reliable power solutions by 2025.

“I commend the efforts of this group for working quickly to bring this extremely important and relevant Compact forward,” said Mark Carrato, Coordinator of Power Africa, who presented the Compact last week. “Access to reliable clean electricity not only powers lights, refrigerators and medical equipment – access to electricity saves lives.”

Luc Severi, Head of Powering Healthcare at SEforALL, explained, “While the COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased interest and effort toward electrifying health facilities, there are several barriers hindering progress at scale. This Energy Compact is a multilateral effort to break down these barriers so that communities get the power they need to provide quality healthcare.”

Currently, the deployment of power solutions to health facilities is hampered by a lack of reliable data on the exact location of health facilities, their current energy needs, and current energy status.

Meanwhile, the health facility electrification sector has a mixed track record on the long-term sustainability of the energy solutions that have been deployed. A better understanding of funding and financing streams in the health, energy, and climate sectors can help identify new delivery models that improve long-term sustainability.

The Energy Compact was developed to address these issues related to data, coordination, and implementation models. Specifically, as part of the Compact, the 14 organizations have each expressed their ambitions to contribute to specific areas. For example, SEforALL has committed to carrying out four country-level assessments as well as play a leading role in sector-wide coordination as part of its multi-year Powering Healthcare programme.

The commitments and ambitions expressed in the Compact from the different organizations together form a set of prioritized activities, including country-level assessments and funding requirements, in essence creating a strategy for the health care electrification sector to rally behind, with the goal of electrifying 25,000 facilities by 2025.  

The Compact builds on a series of consultations, stakeholder roundtables, and provides a strong complement to the recently launched Strategic Roadmap under the Health and Energy Platform for Action (HEPA).

The Compact is supported or endorsed by key organizations from both the health and energy sectors, including SEforALL, Power Africa, GAVI, UNICEF, UNDP, IRENA, Power for All, SELCO Foundation, Odyssey Energy Solutions, Clinton Health Access Initiative, Shell Foundation, UNITAR (on behalf of the Global Platform of Action), We Care Solar, and the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In partnership with Power Africa, SEforALL will continue to build out support for this Energy Compact from additional organizations. We will also work with the supporting organizations to help them achieve their expressed ambitions in the Compact, by leveraging our longstanding Powering Healthcare programme.

Learn more about our Powering Healthcare work and join the conversation via #PoweringHealthcare.

Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) and the UN Foundation have announced an agreement to integrate the Foundation's energy access program into SEforALL, officially bringing both organizations' energy initiatives and staff together. Through this merger, the two institutions will be able to have an even greater impact going forward in their shared goal of delivering the clean and sustainable energy solutions that the world needs.

In particular, combining the work under the SEforALL banner will allow scaled up efforts in areas such as energy and health, clean energy mini-grids, and energy for displaced people. The UN Foundation workstreams for those three areas and their staff have formally joined SEforALL, bringing additional depth and expertise to SEforALL’s energy access work.

"I am delighted that SEforALL will have the responsibility of providing an even broader global platform to the ground-breaking work undertaken by the UN Foundation on energy access at a time when too few were focused on its essential contribution to what became the Sustainable Development Goals. At a time when we are focused on speed and scale, we look forward to this alignment of work allowing us to go further, faster together," said Rachel Kyte, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All.

This merger comes after eight years of close collaboration and partnership between SEforALL and the UN Foundation, during which the two organizations have worked together to help build a nascent sustainable energy movement into the vibrant force that it is today.

"Access to sustainable energy is a key driver of sustainable development, which is why the UN Foundation has been a strong supporter and partner of Sustainable Energy for All since its inception at the UN to its role today as a leading international organization working in this space. This merger is a natural evolution in our partnership that will strengthen our collective ability to drive progress on energy access. The UN Foundation is proud of how far this work has come and we look forward to the possibilities that lie ahead: a world where everyone, everywhere has access to modern, sustainable energy," said Elizabeth Cousens, Deputy CEO of the United Nations Foundation.

The transition of the UN Foundation's energy access program to SEforALL marks an exciting new chapter as we work towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7 on clean and affordable energy for all by 2030 and to going further, faster together.

Photo credit: ADB

Access to energy is a prerequisite for quality health care and is fundamental to the achievement of universal health care coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet, an estimated one in four health facilities in Sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity, and three in four facilities lack reliable power.

There is no better example that illustrates the critical role of energy in advancing human development, health and well-being than a story out of Sierra Leone. On 19 November 2017 three babies at Bo Government Hospital died when a power shortage cut off their oxygen supply. The story was shared over social media by Dr. Niall Conroy, who was overseeing the neo-natal intensive care unit at the hospital.

Lack of sufficient and reliable power is jeopardizing the well-being of hundreds of millions of people, especially women and children, who often bear the brunt of inadequate primary health-care services. In fact, worldwide, more than 289,000 women die every year from pregnancy- and childbirth-related complications, many of which could be averted with the provision of better lighting and other electricity-dependent medical services.

Vital health care services are dependent on reliable energy access. This simple fact means advancing human well-being, especially in developing countries, hinges on improved energy access.

This was the prevailing theme when more than one hundred experts and practitioners from the world’s health care and energy communities convened in Nairobi for the two-day Clean Energy for Health Care conference last month, hosted by the UN Foundation, Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) and partners.

Midwives met solar energy experts, ministers spoke with doctors, and development professionals talked to members of the private sector.

These much-needed conversations across siloes marked a major step forward in bringing awareness to the intersection of Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7): Affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030 – and SDG3: Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages. Much of this focus was directed towards the role clean energy can play in supporting stronger and more resilient health systems, especially in Africa.

One of the conference’s key takeaways was that off-grid solar photovoltaic (PV) systems must play a pivotal role in powering rural health centers. This was highlighted by a report developed by UN Foundation and SEforALL - with support from the UK Department for International Development and Catalyst Off-Grid Advisors – that was launched during the conference.

The report, Lasting Impact: Sustainable Off-Grid Solar Delivery Models to Power Health and Education shows that many unelectrified health institutions are in remote areas that are characterized by poor surrounding infrastructure and low energy demand, making them unattractive to traditional energy service providers. Thus, off-grid solar PV power systems present a key opportunity.

Meanwhile, a growing number of standalone solar systems are being installed in health and education facilities in low- and middle-income countries, but many of these systems prematurely fail or underperform, leading to the perception that renewable technologies are too new and unreliable to continuously serve the needs of communities.

Lasting Impact evaluates different delivery models for deploying solar PV systems in public health and education facilities in resource-constrained settings from the perspective of how the models contribute to – and, likewise, hinder – sustainability. In doing so, the report provides guidance to decision-makers on appropriate delivery models for their own country-specific contexts.

“To achieve SDG3 and SDG7 by 2030, we need rapid progress in bringing power to health care facilities, especially in developing countries,” said Glenn Pearce-Oroz, Director of Policy and Programs at SEforALL. “The Lasting Impact report punctuates the importance of electrification strategies that harness public, private and philanthropic efforts, but with a greater focus on the operation and maintenance of solutions.”  

In addition to the report release, conference sessions explored a variety of themes that are key to powering health facilities in Africa and beyond. These included a prominent role for energy efficiency measures to help manage the overall energy demands of health facilities, off-grid finance models, as well as the need for cross-sectoral planning involving cooperation at different levels of decision-making to design effective policies and programs.

The Clean Energy for Health Care Conference was organized by UN Foundation in collaboration with the World Health Organization, SEforALL, UN Development Programme, International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), UK Department for International Development (DFID), and the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP).

Read the full Lasting Impact report here.

For any media requests, please email media@SEforALL.org.