Helping Women in Brazil Access Affordable Healthcare
Challenge
Brazil has one of the highest rates of preventable death of any OECD country, partly due to high rates of breast and cervical cancer. Each year, millions of women in Brazil miss or delay routine health screenings due to an overburdened public healthcare system and an underdeveloped private healthcare market.
Solution and Impact
A DFC loan is helping GIP Medicina Diagnóstica S.A. expand its chain of women’s health diagnostic centers that provide diagnostic testing, imaging, blood work, and pathology testing services. The company, which is known as Femme in the local market, currently operates 14 centers in São Paulo and will use the DFC financing to expand, adding more than 27 centers over the next six years, serving low and middle-income women. With the additional diagnostic centers, the company projects its annual patient consultations will increase from approximately 300,000 currently to more than 4.5 million. Femme plans to place new locations in underserved areas to help increase access for low-income households.
The project is projected to increase more than 1,000 permanent professional and technical jobs as well as support staff in the next five years. Eighty percent of the new jobs are expected to be filled by women.