Kwara state health insurance programme wins FT/IFC award

Nigeria’s Kwara state, in partnership with the Dutch charity PharmAccess, has won an award backed by the Financial Times and the International Finance Corporation. The award, in the category of maternal and infant health, was won for its health insurance programme to improve access to primary healthcare in rural regions.

The project, backed by Hygeia Community Health Care and the state Health Insurance Fund, offered community education and mobile health to enrol women and children in its subsidised health insurance programme.

Separately, the Piramal Foundation’s Sarvajal project to install so-called “water ATMs”, offering remotely-tracked, solar-powered purification systems to dispense safe, clean water in remote villages in India won the award for transformational technology.

Both projects were part of the 2016 FT/IFC transformational business award. The full list of winners included innovations around climate change, technology and finance.