question 1 we love to hear of healthcare solutions which improve the peoples health s opposed to adding ever more cost - examples:
aravind
australian flying doctors
rsvp info@worldcitizen.tv or comment below
here is yunus perspective and wishes to collaborate round healthcare from his book Building Social Business:
In many countries the rich pay for any healthcare they want, while the mass public service is inefficient, failing to reach people who need it most. The big empty space between the two can be filled by social business.
In Bangladesh Grameen Healthcare is prototyping health management centres in the villages that will keep healthy people healthy by concentrating on prevention and offering diagnostic and health check-up services, health insurance, educating in health practices and nutrition , and so on. GH seeks to take advantage of the near universal use of mobile phones an is working with leading manufacturers to design diagnostic equipment that can transmit images and data in real time to city-based health experts. Technologies amazing new efficiencies can drive cost of health care down so low at GH that the poorest village can be served while achieving the goal of economic self-sufficiency witch is at the heart of social business
Social Business can also play a role in improving the healthcare infrastructure. GH s already in the process of setting up nursing colleges top train girls from Grameen Bank families . Bangladesh has an enormous shortage of nursing professionals. There is no reason why vast numbers of girls should be sitting around in the villages while these attractive job opportunities go unfilled. Nursing colleges run as social businesses can bridge this void.
Many other segments of healthcare are appropriate for building successful social businesses : nutrition, water , energy, health insurance, health education and training, eye care, mother and child care, diagnostic services and so on.
Social Business is a way of putting the most powerful technologies to work. Our world is in possession of amazing technologies that are growing fast and more powerful every day. All this technology is owned and controlled by profit-making businesses. All they use this technology for is to make more money, because that is the shareholders mandate. Imagine what we can achieve if e use this same technology to solve the problems of the people!
Viewed more broadly, technology is simply a kind of vehicle. One can drive it to any desired destination. Since the present owners want to travel to the peaks of profit-making, technology takes them there. If somebody else decides to use the existing technology to end poverty, it will take the owner in that direction. If another owner wants to use it to end diseases, the technology will go there. The choice is ours. The only problem is that the present theoretical framework under which capitalism operates does not give this choice. The inclusion of social business creates this choice.
One more point to ponder: there is actually no need to choose. using technology for new purpose doesn’t make it less effective for serving a different purposes. Actually, it is the other way round. The more diverse uses we make of technology, the more powerful it gets. Using technology for solving social problems will not reduce its effectiveness for making money, but rather enhance it.
The owners of social business can direct the power of technology to solve the growing list of social and economic problems, and get quick results. And in the process. they will generate even more technological idea for future generations of scientists and engineers to develop. The world of social business will benefit not only the poor but all of humanity.
Once the concept of social business becomes widely known, creative people will come forward with attractive designs for social business. Young people will develop business pans to address the most difficult social problems through social business. The wonderful promise of social business makes it all the more important we redefine and broaden our present economic framework. We need a new way of thinking about economics that is mot prone t creating series of crosses; instead it should be capable of ending the crises once and for all. Now is the time for bold and creative thinking - we need to move fast, as the world is changing fast.
