Five-year expansion plan to triple diagnostic network, benefitting 2.5 million low-income patients a year
Salud Digna Para Todos I.A.P., a Mexican non-profit organization, will get a 130 million Mexican peso loan ($10 million) from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to expand access to high-quality, low-cost medical diagnostic services in several northwestern and central Mexican states.
The IDB loan will help finance the opening of 38 new diagnostic clinics in the next five years, tripling the organization’s current network and benefitting on average 2.5 million patients a year with affordable and timely health diagnostic studies.
The IDB financing is expected to be complemented by syndicated loans and/or co-financings from social impact investors mobilized by the Bank, of up to 91 million Mexican pesos (US$7 million), which will contribute to cover the project cost.
The expansion of Salud Digna comes as an aging Mexican population has increased the incidence of chronic diseases, fueling demand for health diagnostic services that the public sector has been unable to fulfill on a timely basis.
In Mexico, non-communicable diseases represent almost 80 percent of total deaths, with heart disease, diabetes, and cancer accounting for over 43 percent of the total of deaths. However, 84 percent of Mexicans under age 65 with diabetes will remain undiagnosed, and only an estimated five to 10 percent of all breast cancer cases in Mexico—the number one cause of death from cancer in women—are detected at early stages.
“This project will help narrow an important gap in diagnostic and preventive healthcare, as over two thirds of Salud Digna’s beneficiaries come from the poorest segments in society,’’ said Peter Stevenson, the project team leader at the IDB’s Structured and Corporate Finance Department.
“By expanding access to affordable and timely health diagnostics, the project will pave the way for the accurate and timely detection and diagnosis of health risks and diseases, allowing low-income Mexicans to seek early treatment, improve their chances of survival and avoid costly medical interventions that could strain their personal finances and as well as those of the public health system.”
“Over the 10-year life of the IDB Loan, Salud Digna expects that it will provide service to a cumulative 26 million mainly low-income beneficiaries,” says Salud Digna CEO Juan Carlos Ordoñez.
In addition to the IDB loan, technical assistance provided to Salud Digna through the Korean Fund for Poverty Reduction will allow the organization to better assess demand and target the location of its new clinics as well as adopt measures to improve service delivery and cost-effectiveness as it scales up its operations.
About Salud Digna
Founded in 2003, Salud Digna currently operates 17 diagnostic clinics in five Mexican states and it receives diagnostic referrals from the social security and public healthcare subsystems, including from Seguro Popular. In 2011, more than one million Mexicans directly benefited from over two million diagnostic services provided in its clinics.
The organization provides services that use more advanced technology and have shorter waiting times than those provided by social security or public healthcare systems across the country, with only a fraction of the cost of what other private clinics in Mexico would charge.
About the IDB's Structured and Corporate Finance Department
The Structured and Corporate Finance Department (SCF) leads all IDB's non-sovereign guaranteed operations for large-scale projects, as well as those linked to companies and financial institutions. Through its Loan Syndication Program, SCF acts as a catalyst, helping to engage third-party resources by partnering with commercial banks, institutional investors, co-guarantors and other co-lenders for projects with high developmental impact.