The health care sector needs funding
- From what you have seen, do you think you can do something for us? Grace Kamero eagerly leans forward in her chair, when she realizes who her visitors are. Grace Kamero is operational manager at Kayole Hospital in Nairobi, and MYC4 is visiting because health care is about to be of bigger interest to MYC4.
Co-founder at MYC4 Tim Vang explains to her that he’s not there with a bag of money yet, and that the ability to repay is extremely important.
Grace Kamero then wants to know if the interest is lower than in the bank, and what she has to put up as collateral. Tim Vang explains to the director one way of doing it: – With the loan you buy the equipment you need, and as collateral we own it until the loan has been repaid. Then it’s yours.
No doubt Mrs. Kamero is interested, it doesn’t take long to realize that the place could use some new machines, an incubator is one of them.
The director at Kayole Hospital in Nairobi is right, they do need new equipment
The little MYC4 delegation is on a tour in Nairobi and a town called Kerugoya visiting hospitals and a chain of health clinics called LiveWell.
The sign explains pretty well what they offer at LiveWell
Liza Kimbo is director at Livewell Health Clinics and comments on the fact that 80 % of the Kenyan doctors work in Nairobi. Needless to say 80 % of the Kenyan population does not live in the capital, so the need for doctors in smaller towns and rural areas is enormous.
- We want to make health accessible throughout the country for low-income groups. We are still at an early stage, but we want to increase. We would definitely be interested in MYC4 investors. Currently we are waiting for approval for children’s vaccines, mumps, measels etc.
Director, LiveWell Health Clinics, Liza Kimbo
The key issue for many people is that when they go to a clinic they don’t know whether the staff are qualified or not. Our people are always qualified, says Liza Kimbo.
I compliment her on the nice and goodlooking clinics we have seen. – Oh yes, but that can be a problem too, she says, if we look too fancy clients won’t come, because they think we are too expensive.
And that may be the problem in Kerugoya, 20 clients a day isn’t enough, particularly if some of them just stops by for a couple of aspirin. Competition is heavy, the town has 13 clinics, and financially ours isn’t very encouraging. Maybe we will have to close it, she says.
From MYC4s point of view health care is interesting although not very present on the platform. Out of a total of 936 loans currently being repaid only 19 are in the health sector.
But investors are interested, which can be seen on the platform; the interest is relatively low, meaning that the – mainly social – investors have been bidding quite intensively.
