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Showing posts with label Enterprising Ideas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Enterprising Ideas. Show all posts

Thursday, May 24, 2007

PBS' Enterprising Ideas: Can for-profit health-care franchises improve African lives?

It's slightly off-topic but I can't help myself. Look a this cool new idea from PBS:

Can the quality of healthcare in developing nations be transformed by the same principle that makes fast food such a success here? On Friday, May 25 at 8:30 pm (check local listings), NOW travels to Kenya to investigate an enterprising idea: franchising not burger and donut shops, but health services and drugs in rural Africa. American businessmen are teaming with African entrepreneurs to spread for-profit clinics around the country in the hopes of providing quality, affordable medical care to even Kenya's poorest people. But can they overcome obstacles like extreme poverty, corruption, fraudulent services, and long distances to establish a sustained solution to a chronic problem?

"If we had as many franchise outlets delivering health care in developing countries as Subway has sandwich shops, we've estimated that we could serve about 120 million people a year," Businessman Scott Hillstrom, who conceived the idea, told NOW's David Brancaccio.

This episode is part of a new beat on NOW and NOW Online called "Enterprising Ideas" that focuses on innovative solutions to social problems around the world. For the next two years, NOW will devote time to examining how people are applying business skills toward a new kind of bottom line: Making the world a better place.

NOW has created an all-new website at www.pbs.org/now/enterprisingideas, which has more innovator stories, tools and tips for starting new programs and a contest to find a social entrepreneur for special NOW coverage. The site launches Friday, May 25.