Please can you tell us about The Evercare Group, its vision and mission and footprint?
The The Evercare Group is an impact-driven company wholly owned by the The Evercare Group Health Fund, a US$ 1 billion emerging markets healthcare fund managed by TPG’s, through ‘the Rise Fund’, an impact investment fund working with growth stage, mission-driven companies that are focused on transforming healthcare globally.
At the The Evercare Group, we are committed to transforming healthcare for millions of people in emerging markets. This is titled The The Evercare Group’s vision of “Transforming Healthcare in Emerging Markets.” Our commitment is underpinned by the UN Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all, at all ages”.
Our integrated health platform is comprised of 31 hospitals, 13 clinics, 93 diagnostic centres, 2 health colleges (one in Asia and one in Africa), a leading Gender Based Violence Recovery Centre in Nairobi, with overall more than 11,000 employees and caregivers across Africa and South Asia, more specifically in five countries: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Nigeria. We focus on the “double bottom line”; bringing high-quality care to traditionally underserved communities while building a robust business and achieving measurable and sustainable returns. Since inheriting the platform in 2019, The Evercare Group/TPG has transformed the organization strategically, operationally, and clinically while delivering robust growth. Over the past 5 years, our healthcare facility portfolio has witnessed a healthy and sustainable growth, as we continue to provide accessible healthcare to all, aligned with our values of quality, integrity, passion, respect, and innovation.
How is the The Evercare Group transforming healthcare in the emerging market?
The Evercare Group contributes toward the long-term sustainable economic growth of key emerging markets, by encouraging the retention of medical and healthcare expenditure within these markets.
Access to quality healthcare in one’s own emerging market country
Throughout our extensive network, we provide quality care to safeguard and improve our patients’ health and well-being. Within our portfolio of hospitals, we share learnings, develop best-practices, and encourage improvement to better deliver the quality of care, our patients deserve. We provide comprehensive care within each country to ensure that medical needs can be met in the country or, at least, in one region. This helps reduce the cost to the patients that access our services. In doing so, we aid in the reversal of medical tourism in these countries and encourage patients to trust their local healthcare system.
Job creation, training + diversity and inclusion
We also believe in going beyond the provision of healthcare, and we create jobs that allow our employees and caregivers to contribute to their local economies. We provide specialized training and develop employees so they can deliver quality care and we also support national government initiatives to improve healthcare services.
We have a broad network of health facilities and health professionals across Asia and Africa, and we created an integrated health platform to exchange expertise and best practices across the two continents. Our workforce is diverse, and we believe diversity and inclusiveness lead to belonging. Diversity is about differences and inclusiveness is about leveraging those differences to achieve better business results; creating an environment where all people feel and are valued. We care about our people. We are committed to offering a healthy and safe work environment which values the worth, dignity and the diversity of our employees as well as our patients and visitors.
What are the Group’s main achievements in recent years?
Since inheriting the platform in 2019, The Evercare Group/TPG has transformed the organization strategically, operationally, and clinically while delivering robust revenues and profit growth.
Through our integrated healthcare platforms, we have continued to strengthen and expand our outreach to offer life-enhancing services to more than 4.1 million patients across South Asia and Africa.
With the opening of new hospitals in Pakistan (Lahore August 2019), Bangladesh (Chattogram April 2021) and Nigeria (Lekki Feb 2021), we continue to strengthen and expand our commitment to developing quality healthcare ecosystems that deliver accessible healthcare and foster sustainable and economic development. Each of our facilities is designed to bridge local, quality healthcare capacity gaps and deliver significant societal and economic benefits by helping to create healthier populations, increase employment, support government initiatives to transform healthcare, boost local retention of professional expertise, and reverse outbound medical tourism trends and spending.
15 of our hospitals achieved accreditation status with international forums and bodies like Joint Commission International (JCI) across various countries, The Council for Health Service Accreditation of Southern Africa (COHSASA) for Kenya, National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH) for India, SafeCare for Nigeria, and Punjab Healthcare Commission (PHC) for Pakistan. By the end of 2022, we aim to have another 5 hospitals achieve accreditation status with the remaining hospitals accredited by 2024. Our goal is to have every facility in our network accredited with a recognized healthcare accreditation body. This ensures that our health systems are strengthened through recognized standards and improvement of quality care to provide safer and better health care delivery.
What are the main challenges you are facing?
Of course, one of the biggest challenges we faced over the last few years has been the global pandemic. When the pandemic was first recognized, we immediately established a comprehensive clinical and operational pandemic response and management.
We invested in our infrastructure to help manage the pandemic. We created new business units for testing and treatment and dedicated more than 400 ICUs and 1200 hospital beds to Covid patients. We delivered PCR tests, made our diagnostic centers available, and supported vaccination centers, all this at no cost.
The guidance provided by local and international authorities, such as WHO and the Centre for Disease Control, was used to develop protocols and guidelines, as well as tighten policies, and response plans to protect health workers and patients.
In addition, lack of investments in aging healthcare systems remains an issue and a challenge. Let me share with you some statistics: Children in Africa are 14 times more likely to die before their 5th birthday than children in Europe or North America. There are only 2.3 doctors per 10,000 people in Africa versus 39 in Europe. These statistics and countless others, combined with the impact of Covid-19 on the health systems clearly demonstrate the urgent need for further investments in emerging markets and mainly in Africa and to combine the effort of the public and private sectors if we are to reverse the decline and put the world back on track to achieve the SDGs by 2030.
CSR lies at the heart of the The Evercare Group business model. What does that mean for you and the way you conduct your business?
We work relentlessly to create a healthier population and close the gap in access to quality healthcare. Our CSR initiatives are aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and are guided by the principles of accessing healthcare being a fundamental right for everyone.
Building on our CSR initiatives and extending our outreach to the most vulnerable, in March 2022 at the margins of the Dubai International Humanitarian and Development Conference (DIHAD), we launched the The Evercare Group Foundation: A world with Equitable Healthcare for all focusing on women and children’s health as our top priority. Through the work of the Foundation and the Group’s CSR activities, we launched targeted initiatives and programs to reach those underserved populations who typically are not able to access quality healthcare. For example, through our Gender Based Violence Recovery Center in Nairobi, we aim to focus on the underserved and hard-to-reach regions whilst strengthening the nexus with sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR).
During the period April 2021-March 2022 the Gender-Based Violence Recovery Centre (GBVRC) supported a total of 3,688 Gender Based Violence (GBV) survivors in Nairobi with free access to medical treatment and psychosocial support.
We are also conducting a program to help prevent and treat Congenital Hearing and Speech Impairment among Vulnerable Children in Pakistan. This life-changing initiative is one of many more needed to address the prevalence of congenital hearing impairment which contributes to around 58% of all the physical and mental disabilities in Pakistan. We have completed the initial phase of this program in Rajanpur in partnership with the local province where three children under five benefited from cochlear implants. The implants of these children were activated, and they were able to hear for the first time. The children are being supported with speech therapy and they will be enrolled in the school for the first time this year.
We have plans to expand on these programs and other programs focusing on women’s and children’s health and wellbeing among vulnerable communities.
Can you share more about the Group’s commitment to sustainability and ESG principles?
At the The Evercare Group, we believe that there is a fundamental connection between healthy patients, employees, and a sustainable environment, and we have a corporate responsibility to demonstrate our commitment and leadership in our business practices, healthcare facilities, and overall ecosystem. Our group ESG principles are the essential building blocks for the Group and must be equally respected by our workforce, contractors, suppliers, and vendors. Establishing best-in-class ethical practices within our facilities enables us to better conserve natural resources, generate long‐term cost savings, and improve the health and safety of our people while delivering high-quality care and patient safety in the markets we serve. We encourage all our employees to become environmental stewards in their workplace and their communities.
I would also like to add that our staff is at the heart of all that we do, and we call our employees “Caregivers”. Caregivers differentiated our people; it acknowledges that every person within our group goes above and beyond in the care they provide. Over the past years, we implemented several initiatives to build sustainable healthcare systems through robust talent development, building a culture of diversity and inclusion and developing and strengthening policies in relation to gender equality and women’s empowerment.
In closing, please tell us about the
future of the Group
Our mission and vision will continue to drive our behaviours and initiatives. The Evercare Group remains fully committed to high-quality healthcare services for all our patients.
Following our sizable investments in recent years across South Asia, we aim to equally expand our footprint in Africa. We will support and build an Africa-centric healthcare platform designed to deliver improved quality of care by leveraging The Evercare Group’s existing infrastructure in Kenya and Nigeria. The investment will be geared towards full continuum of primary to tertiary care as well as across specialty care, medical talent, integrated clinical corridors, affordability, management services and digital transformation.
At the The Evercare Group, we believe the future of healthcare is to bring healthcare to the patient and increase the accessibility to quality healthcare, for all. We will relentlessly keep investing in innovation and technology to be able to treat more patients at home, especially in more remote areas.