India

It is estimated that by 2050, over 70% of the world’s population will live in cities; according to the Indian National Sample Survey, there are currently more than 52 million poor people living in the cities and towns of India. Access to essential health services, especially in urban poor settlements, is key to building habitable and sustainable cities. With the Challenge Initiative for Healthy Cities, funded by USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, PSI India aims to connect the urban poor with public and private resources to implement proven health solutions.

The state of Rajasthan has one of the highest maternal and newborn mortality rates in the country: 244 mothers die for every 100,000 births, and 47 infants die for every 1000 live births. In order to address this, PSI India is implementing the Utkrisht Development Impact Bond to improve the state of maternal and newborn health care in Rajasthan. Impact bonds are an innovative way to finance international development and are focused on outcomes, which allow projects to leverage private investor capital to address some of the world’s greatest challenges. This is the world’s first Development Impact Bond for health, as well as the largest and most ambitious impact bond to date. It is focused on improving access and quality in private health facilities in Rajasthan, ultimately helping these facilities to achieve the certification standard developed by the National Accreditation Board of Hospitals and Healthcare Providers and another certification under the aegis of the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India.

Since 2012, PSI India has played a leading role as an innovator for sanitation programming across the PSI network. PSI India’s sanitation work began with the Supporting Sustainable Sanitation Improvements in Bihar project. In 2014 PSI India also started working on the challenges of urban sanitation, specifically unsafe disposal of huge quantity of toilet waste. In 2017, PSI India secured additional funding to continue monitoring the sanitation market, facilitate market expansion and track quality and results and new funding for improved toilet use though behavior change communication in Andhra Pradesh. By the year 2019, PSI India expanded its urban sanitation work on fecal sludge management expanded in two new provinces Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

PSI India is working to improve access to quality tuberculosis care and control services through accelerating markets and working with TB patients, public and private health system. As part of Sustainable Health Outcomes through Private Sector Partnerships (SHOPS) Plus project, PSI India is implementing two innovative market accelerator concepts: first, integrating TB prevention to care services within the national urban health mission platform and second, increasing access of free drugs and diagnostics provided through national program to patients treated in private sector through private e-pharmacies. 

In partnership with Eli Lilly & Company, India joined a consortium of non-governmental organizations in 2012, which includes the Public Health Foundation of India and Hope Trust. The consortium pilots the integration of non-communicable disease prevention and care activities under the National Urban Health Mission, specifically for diabetes and high blood pressure. 

With funding from USAID, PSI India is implementing Wajood, a project that showcases an innovative approach to implementing a range of technological and non-technological interventions aimed at improving the health and well-being of urban adolescents, implemented through the public and private sector. The project has, for the first time in India, demonstrated that creating safe spaces for urban adolescents facilitates easier and honest conversations, including on issues related to sexual and reproductive health and prevention of gender-based violence. The project has reached 55,243 adolescents from the cities of Bhopal and Bhubaneshwar.