PRIMEX bagged the ADB contract for the preparation of the Border Areas Health Project (BAHP) in Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) under TA-6770 REG: Support for Human and Social Development in Southeast Asia – Phase 2.
After the consultancy contract was signed by ADB on 28 March 2023, the PRIMEX Consultant Team held its first team meeting on the same day, and a hybrid Kickoff Meeting was conducted on 4 April 2023 with 28 participants from key Ministry of Health (MOH) departments and ADB. The Team is currently in the field for a reconnaissance survey and local-level stakeholder consultations in the candidate project sites in the north and south of Vientiane.
The BAHP will have the following outcome: Access to quality health services for populations residing in and migrating through selected border areas improved. It will have three outputs: (i) Output 1: Health service delivery in selected border areas strengthened; (ii) Output 2: Digital systems for integrated delivery of health services within and across borders enhanced; and (iii) Output 3: Cross-border collaboration for delivery of health enhanced. The PRIMEX Team will be mainly responsible for the design of Outputs 1 and 3, while individual consultants will handle the design of Output 2. MOH has identified nine provinces/cities as locations for the project and, within each location, the health facilities and border checkpoints for investment will be prioritized. The project will be implemented by MOH as the executing agency (EA), through the Department of Planning and Cooperation (DPC), and the Department of Health Care and Rehabilitation (DHCR), Food and Drugs Department (FDD), and the Department of Communicable Disease Control (DCDC) as the likely implementing agencies (IAs).
Ms. Elvira Ablaza, PRIMEX Chief Operating Officer, expressed her elation with this recent win. She said, “We are extremely pleased that we won the contract for the implementation of this Transaction Technical Assistance (TRTA) as it has allowed PRIMEX to continue our involvement in the Lao health sector. Our first major health project in the country was TA 9190-LAO: Strengthening Capacity for Health Sector Governance Reform (HSGR), implemented from November 2016 to August 2018, with Dr. Vincent de Wit as Team Leader. Our second contract was the TRTA for the Quality of Health Care Project (QHCP) (under TA 9723-REG: Support for Human and Social Development In Southeast Asia), from December 2019 to October 2020, with Dr. Juliet Fleischl as Team Leader. And now, under the BAHP TA, Dr. de Wit and Dr. Fleischl are co-team leaders.”
Mr. Ryohei Ishii, PRIMEX Chairman and President, added, “It is also interesting to note that this is PRIMEX’s first time to win a contract through the new Simplified Consultant Qualification Selection (SCQS) mode of procurement, which basically skips shortlisting in the consultant selection process.”
The PRIMEX Consultant Team is composed of seven international and three national specialists led by Dr. J. Fleischl, Team Leader/Health Human Resources Specialist and Dr. V. de Wit, Co-Team Leader/Health Systems Specialist. Ms. Ablaza serves as PRIMEX Project Director, while Ms. Rutchel Macasa, PRIMEX Manager for Project Operations, acts as Project Manager.