“Across the developing world, health facilities sit vacant” because “[d]onors who were delighted to help build a hospital or clinic move on to other causes, and eventually the doors close, leaving communities with broken promises,” Elizabeth Sheehan, founder of Containers 2 Clinics, writes in the Huffington Post’s “Impact” blog. “Experts in global health care are currently searching for ways to deliver services in a more responsible way, to harness the power of local markets to sustain services and alleviate the burden of annual philanthropic fundraising,” she writes, adding, “Empowering communities to support their own health care by sharing costs with them means that non-profit service delivery organizations can direct philanthropic aid to growth instead of annual operating costs, and also opens the door to for-profit social enterprises.”

“Funders and investors alike must support the growth of creative solutions that combine the agility of free market capitalism with the social mission of the non-profit and the public mandate of government agencies,” Sheehan states. “In global health care we strive to provide proven, inexpensive life-saving health care with cost-sharing models that ensure long-term sustainability,” she continues, concluding, “Only by leveraging the very best aspects of the public, private and government sectors will we find solutions that have the durability and social impact to provide health care to vulnerable communities worldwide” (8/23).