Prisoners are in vogue for SIBs in the west whole today we have an interesting story about DIBs in the welcome efforts to eradicate malaria.
Malaria In Mozambique: Trialling Payment By Results
Lily Han – The Guardian
Malaria control programmes in recent decades offer overwhelming evidence that integrated, sustained malaria-eradication protocols that cover prevention, diagnosis, and treatment achieve results.
But two factors have kept the disease burden posed by malaria high in some of the most underdeveloped parts of the world: a lack of sustained financing and lack of co-ordination among interventions. This is exactly why malaria is such a prime target for applying development impact bonds (Dibs), a new way of attracting funding for development issues such as malaria.
In Dibs, donors commit to pay for achievement of a particular development goal. Private investors provide the bridge funding to allow interventions to operate towards the goal. Others – such as governments and donors – implement interventions, and the investors are repaid if the goal is reached. Dibs create incentives for the investors to demand good data on progress, and give the implementers freedom to adapt their methods in reaction to ongoing data collection. They create a new tool for investment, demand accountability, and enable practitioners to work with flexibility and innovation – all of which drive results.
The Guardian recently put Dibs and their potential applications under the spotlight. What these applications have in common is a need for sustained financing and co-ordination – two things that Dibs provide by design.
It makes sense, then, that a coalition of public and private groups (including government, corporates, and public donors) is working to make malaria control in Mozambique the focus of one of the first development impact bonds soon to be issued. The Mozambique malaria performance bond (MMPB) is designed to increase funding for, and the efficiency of, malaria interventions. Over 10 years, the MMPB aims to protect up to 8 million people in Mozambique from infection and reduce malaria prevalence in the targeted areas by up to 75%.