- Mastercard, Gavi, the Ethiopia Ministry of Health and JSI announce their partnership to implement the Mastercard Wellness Pass solution within Ethiopia’s health information system and aim to bring efficiency to healthcare tracking and offline portability of health records in the most marginalized communities
- Mastercard Wellness Pass will be implemented at selected health facilities throughout the country – including in urban, rural, and pastoral locations – over a 15-month pilot period
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, 17 June 2022, /African Media Agency/- In many low- and middle-income countries, patient healthcare data is currently fragmented and largely collected, recorded, and stored in paper-based systems. The manual healthcare system can cause siloed medical records, limited patient verification, lack of accessibility and offline portability, and results in an inability to aggregate and report data efficiently.
This is why Mastercard, Gavi, the Ethiopia Ministry of Health and JSI today have announced a partnership to implement the Mastercard Wellness Pass solution within Ethiopia’s health information system, with the aim of bringing efficiency to healthcare tracking and offline portability of health records in the most marginalized communities.
Wellness Pass is an interoperable and offline portable healthcare credential – accessible within a trusted network that creates continuity of care by allowing a patient’s medical data to be stored offline and travel with them on their Mastercard Community Pass chip card, which every patient receives from participating health facilities when they get their first vaccine or health service. For clinicians, Wellness Pass ensures that the vaccination records are available any time through participating health facilities, regardless of connectivity, and utilizes tokenized biometrics to verify service delivery and adhere to vaccination cycles.
This progressive initiative by the Ministry of Health is just one piece in the larger Information Revolution Agenda, an ambitious component of the Health Sector Transformation Plan that seeks to improve the availability, accessibility, affordability, and quality of primary health care, thereby improving health and wellbeing of the Ethiopian population.
The partnership aims to implement the Wellness Pass technology through several phases. Phase one of the implementation will be focused on Covid-19 vaccination tracking and will be deployed at health facilities throughout the country, including both urban and rural locations, over a 15-month period. Phase two plans to scale the use of Wellness Pass across multiple health care programs, to be determined in partnership with the Ministry of Health.
Creating efficiencies by improving health data accessibility
Mastercard’s Wellness Pass in Ethiopia is the second implementation on the continent, after the launch in Mauritania, which aims to digitize the childhood immunization program to ensure consistent and improved service delivery to parents and children across health facilities and to ensure that government and health partners can access trusted data in an aggregated form to inform policy and decision making.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and Mastercard have been partnered since 2018, to deploy the Mastercard Wellness Pass to eligible countries, with the aim to not only deliver vaccines to millions of individuals, but also, using Mastercard’s technology, enable digitization of health records in the form of contactless cards.
“Ensuring the equitable distribution of vaccines is critical for the world to emerge from this pandemic, and it will take a collective response by the public and private sector. Working together with Gavi, the Ethiopia Ministry of Health and JSI, this partnership will allow us to bring private sector technology and capabilities to the table to support efforts to make sure that everyone has access to critical health care and that that care is delivered in an efficient and effective manner,” says Michael Froman, Vice Chairman and President of Strategic Growth, Mastercard.
“The digitisation of vaccination records through the Mastercard Wellness Pass enables us to reach and to continue to care for patients with vital health services such as immunisation. Innovative partnerships such as this help us to improve access to care so that everyone receives the essential vaccines they need to survive and thrive,” says Marie-Ange Saraka-Yao, Gavi’s Managing Director of Resource Mobilisation, Private Sector Partnerships & Innovative Finance, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
This digital technology will support Ethiopia’s national health response program by enabling the continuity of patient care through the portability of digitized health records. These will be in the form of contactless cards for patients that can be used by health facilities in both connected and offline environments. The portable health credentials will improve healthcare by decentralizing patient record keeping and facilitating better recording, tracking, and patient adherence to vaccination cycles. This will benefit not only the patient, but also healthcare service providers, and the Ministry of Health.
“Lack of healthcare data portability has a definite impact on the levels of service utilisation and health outcomes among people in different geographical areas and socio-economic groups. Therefore, it is very important to solve this great challenge, and it will take a collective response by public and private sectors to reach the necessary scale, and this is why we are excited about this new partnership, one that is designed to enable us to provide the best possible care to our citizens, regardless of where they are,” says Dr Lia Tadesse from Ministry of Health.
Digitising health records is the first step to transforming health care across the African continent, but it can be a challenging undertaking for any government. By improving access to and reliability of program data, Ethiopia’s Wellness Pass will allow for more accurate measurement of target populations for COVAX related data-driven planning, improved adherence to health care protocols, and continuity of care to patients through record portability.
Distributed by African Media Agency on behalf of Mastercard Incorporated.
About the Ministry
The Ministry of Health is missioned to promote the health and well-being of the society through providing and regulating a comprehensive package of health services of the highest possible quality in an equitable manner which ultimately turns out to the realization of the healthy, productive & prosperous Citizens. The Ministry is also responsible for public health concerns by coordinating the health and health related actors on the way to accelerating progress towards universal health coverage, while protecting people from epidemic, pandemic and overall health emergencies. It aligned its resources towards the achievement of the overall Health sector transformation to bring about the desired health system responsiveness. https://www.moh.gov.et/
MOH, Ethiopia Communications Contact: yordanos.alebachew@moh.g
About Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE: MA)
Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all. www.mastercard.com
Mastercard Communications Contact: Ozzy.Etomi@mastercard.com
About Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is a public-private partnership that helps vaccinate half the world’s children against some of the world’s deadliest diseases. Since its inception in 2000, Gavi has helped to immunise a whole generation – over 888 million children – and prevented more than 15 million future deaths, helping to halve child mortality in 73 lower-income countries. Gavi also plays a key role in improving global health security by supporting health systems as well as funding global stockpiles for Ebola, cholera, meningococcal and yellow fever vaccines. After two decades of progress, Gavi is now focused on protecting the next generation, above all the zero-dose children who have not received even a single vaccine shot. The Vaccine Alliance employs innovative finance and the latest technology – from drones to biometrics – to save millions more lives, prevent outbreaks before they can spread and help countries on the road to self-sufficiency. Learn more at www.gavi.org and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.
Gavi is a co-convener of COVAX, the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, together with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF. In its role, Gavi is focused on procurement and delivery for COVAX: coordinating the design, implementation and administration of the COVAX Facility and the Gavi COVAX AMC and working with its Alliance partners UNICEF and WHO, along with governments, on country readiness and delivery.
The Vaccine Alliance brings together developing country and donor governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry, technical agencies, civil society, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other private sector partners. View the full list of donor governments and other leading organisations that fund Gavi’s work here.
GAVI Communications contact: lshevlin@gavi.org
About John Snow, Inc.
John Snow, Inc. is a global public health consulting organization dedicated to greater health equity and improving the health of individuals and communities, and providing an environment where people of passion can pursue this cause. With more than 40 years of sector-leading experience, JSI is pioneering how we use data and digital to create better health outcomes for all. Across the globe, we work at the forefront of our sector to transform the way health systems work through improved data practices and solutions — from understanding and elevating people’s needs, to creating and streamlining the products and services that meet those needs. We have been engaged in partnership with the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia for over 25 years, where we support equitable, evidence driven health systems that support everyone — improving the way clients experience their health, ensuring health actors have the support they need, and ensuring systems are set up for success long into the future. www.jsi.com
JSI Communications Contact: digitalhealth@jsi.com
