Foreign economic-aid-related services

Tender description

The UK will invest up to £30m to strengthen its health partnership offer to support developing country health systems, with an emphasis on large-scale strategic partnerships in 8 – 10 countries and smaller innovative partnerships. DFID intends to publish a new competition opportunity for the new multimillion 4 – 5 year programme to support health partnerships between UK and developing country institutions. The supplier or consortia will be responsible for overall programme leadership and implementation, including grant design/selection/award, oversight of technical design and implementation of projects, technical support, and knowledge management. The expected outcome is improved health worker and health service performance for poor and vulnerable populations in targeted areas and selected countries. This will be accomplished through the following outputs: 1) Strategic health partnerships linked to national priorities and other health sector initiatives to address health system constraints and foster innovative approaches in 8 — 10 low income countries; 2) Improved health workforce training, skills mix, motivation and human resource planning in targeted health institutions and geographic areas; 3) A stronger and coordinated UK volunteer supply base and enabling environment for volunteering; 4) Increase evidence base on the effectiveness of health partnerships compared to other approaches to strengthening health systems. There will be a separate contract let for independent evaluation of the programme which will aim to increase our understanding of what makes partnerships work and be effective in delivering development outcomes. The programme will build on the lessons and successes from earlier UK health partnership programmes and the current Health Partnership Scheme which comes to an end in February 2019. Building on areas of UK comparative advantage, it will help deliver a new vision and strategic approach to health partnerships and the UK government commitment to strengthen UK institutional partnerships in low income countries. It will need to have: — Greater focus on a smaller number of countries where there is most likely to be maximum gain (e.g. where UK already has a significant footprint), — Greater “country ownership”, i.e. more engagement from partner governments and stakeholders and clearer alignment with national plans, — Be explicitly linked to reaching development goals, i.e. progress on Global Goal 3, particularly the target on universal health coverage, and the need to “leave no one behind”, — A holistic approach to health systems strengthening, which in turn demands the involvement of different parts of the health sector (e.g. NGOs and the private sector) and better coordination between partners, — Ongoing commitment to high quality evaluation and learning to inform health partnership policy and practice, — Focus on areas of UK comparative advantage such as curriculum development and professionalization, laboratory and diagnostics work, — Increased support for volunteering by UK sending organisations.