page_title: PharmAccess Foundation
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: PharmAccess Foundation / History
context_page_description: PharmAccess Foundation is part of the PharmAccess Group. PharmAccess is an international non-profit organization with a digital agenda dedicated to connecting more people in sub-Saharan Africa to better healthcare. By making use of public-private partnerships, they leverage donor contributions, which they believe will pave the way for private investments hereby contributing to healthier populations and social and economic development. Currently PharmAccess employs a multidisciplinary team of professionals in Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and the Netherlands.
  PharmAccess was founded in 2001 by HIV/AIDS researcher Prof. Joep Lange. He took an important first step for the organization by distributing life-saving medicines against HIV/AIDS in Africa in cooperation with multinationals. In 2007, PharmAccess was one of two organizations that won a competition for a World Bank funding partnership.
  Other leading individuals in the organization are Onno Schellekens, MsC, the managing director of the Investment Fund for Health in Africa, and Professor Tobias Rinke de Wit of the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development.
context_section_description: Prof. Joep Lange of the Academic Medical Center (AMC) initiated PharmAccess in 2001, with support from the Dutch Aids Fonds, to bring life-saving antiretroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS treatment to Africa. Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) was introduced in the developed world in the mid-nineties and immediately led to dramatic reductions in AIDS-related morbidity and mortality. In Africa, for the great majority of the population, adults and children, treatment was not available and many of the HIV/AIDS patients died of the disease.
  Initially, PharmAccess focused on the introduction of HIV/AIDS treatment programs for employees and dependents of Heineken in sub-Saharan Africa, which was revolutionary at the time. Soon they realized that these programs could be broadened to lay a foundation for the development of functional general health systems. The Dutch government, Dutch multinationals and PharmAccess joined forces to launch an alternative mechanism to the traditional development approach: a donor fund established to pilot health insurance for the currently uninsured in sub-Saharan Africa through the local private sector.
  In order to enable the private companies in sub-Saharan Africa to grow and deliver the necessary services, a private investment fund (Investment Fund for Health in Africa, IFHA) was endorsed in 2007. In the years after this led to additional offshoots which all contribute to general health system strengthening and support to the health insurance schemes.
caption: Map of activities in Africa
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