The Global Forum for Health Research “Forum 2009: Innovating for the Health of All” takes place this week in Havana, Cuba from 16-20 November. This is the second of a series of posts from the conference.

From Tuesday’s sessions, there were two parallel concepts related to developing countries assisting developing countries: governmental South-South cooperation and social entrepreneurs who have scaled their own models, a different form of South-South cooperation.

In the morning, key ideas about governments helping each other:

1. New and old partnerships. Cuba-Africa (see last post), China Africa (10 ag centers recently announced), Brazil-Cuba (health technology), India Africa (pan-African e-network).
2. Focus on capacity-building. Brought up by two panelists from Fiocruz in Brazil. A new priority in the history of SSC (South-South cooperation).
3. Moving beyond traditional partners. Brazil has largely restricted many of its efforts to Portuguese-speaking countries of the world: East Timor, Sao Tome & Principe, Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde. I’m not certain if this is because of language or solidarity, but I expect it’s both. But now, through Unasur – a entity resembling the EU – they are working more within South America. And they are also exploring cooperation with Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Tanzania. All this work out of Fiocruz’s Africa office.

In the afternoon, social entrepreneurs in developing countries – including IDCs or transitional countries, as Carlos Morel would have it – developing successful models and scaling the models themselves:

1. Riders for Health. Nigerian technicians training the Gambian technicians for the Riders for Health program to provide affordable, reliable health transport to rural communities. [To fund the Gambian program, which covers the entire country, Riders for Health took a loan for US$3.5 million from a Nigerian bank, underwritten by the Skoll Foundation. Now, as the government pays Riders for each km of usage in the system, Riders is paying back Skoll. This is an example of what Lakshmi Karan from Skoll called "innovating financing".]
2. Aravind Eye Care System. AECS supporting four “managed hospitals” outside Tamil Nadu, within India and providing technical assistance to countries such as Congo and Bangladesh. All based on their hospital management innovations.
3. Renascer (now Salud Criaça). Exporting the Renascer model from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to multiple states within Brazil. A program for comprehensive support for families with high-risk children, everything from rebuilding leaky roofs to food assistance to medicines to supporting micro-enterprise.

It seems we shouldn’t forget the contribution of non-governmental players in South-South cooperation and that we should examine systems that successfully scale /within/ large and diverse (Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria) or massive and diverse (India, China) countries.