United Nations Report
The document ‘Cooperatives in social development’ emphasises and values the importance of the business model.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a sudden, massive increase in the demand for health services and the health cooperatives in many countries were ready to give support, alleviating some of the pressure faced by the public health systems.” This was affirmed by António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations in the report Cooperatives in social development.
The document mentions several examples such as “in Brazil, where the effects of the pandemic have been devastating”, or Japan where “the health cooperatives gave free medical care to the vulnerable population.” It also emphasises the case of Spain, where the healthcare cooperatives such as ASISA and Assistència Sanitària “opened up their installations for use by the public sector.” The report also acknowledges how many cooperatives distributed personal protection equipment, carried out awareness campaigns and established support funds for the healthcare workers affected by the disease. It also underscored the good practices developed in India and Cameroon.
In its conclusions, the United Nations document requests governments to “create policies and programmes to take advantage of the cooperative business model for a more inclusive and resilient recovery by extending cooperative healthcare services to cover a larger number of people.”
