The USAID Global Health Bureau’s Office of Country Support (GH/OCS) and the New Partnerships Initiative Expanding Health Partnerships (NPI EXPAND) Project announced a new webinar series on Local Capacity Development (LCD). It was the first webinar in the series providing a macro overview of USAID projects making sustainable enterprises through Local Capacity Development (LCD) for encouraging the participants to learn around. Mr. Jeff Barnes, Project Director, NPI EXPAND as the main moderator of the webinar invited Ms. Melissa Jones, Director, Office of Country Support, Bureau for Global Health, USAID for giving the opening remark. Later Ms. Kerry Pelzman, Acting Assitant Administrator, Bereau for Global Health, USAID and Mr. Tsegaye Tilahun, Project Management Specialst (Health), USAID Ethiopia shared their experiences on the local capacity development.

Moderated by Ms. Anne Jorgensen, Capacity Development Director, HP+ Project, Palladium, the next roundtable discussion was participated by Dr. Carlos Ceuller, Co-founder, PROSALUD Bolivia and Mr. Md. Ali Reza Khan, MD & CEO, Social Marketing Company, Bangladesh. Mr. Khan presented a short overview reiterating SMC as one of the most successful investments of USAID contributing significantly to the health and population sector in Bangladesh. Nevertheless, he also highlighted major milestones of the company and its remarkable achievements in establishing a business model combining a not-for-profit and profit-making operations. He said “Our success of engaging local private sector health providers enabled them to develop their capacity and helped integration with the public health sector to achieve national goals in the health, population, and nutrition sector.” He also added, SMC along with its strong distribution network and efficient field force is ensuring access to public health priority products and services both at pharma and non-pharma outlets contributing significantly to fulfill the objectives of the national health and family planning program. For example, he informed that SMC notably contributed to increasing the contraceptive prevalence rate at the national level mostly by sharing 62% of condoms, 47% of pills, and 33% of injectable contraceptives.