The Private Sector’s Role in Strengthening Public Hospitals in Zambia During the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: A Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Perspective

This chapter is based on a desktop research study that focused on the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Zambia, which had and continues to have a negative impact on the country’s public hospitals. Indeed, after the outbreak of COVID-19 in the country, many people were hospitalised for treatment and palliative care. Thus, a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases resulted in an unprecedented high demand for testing kits, personal protective equipment (PPE) for both medical staff and patients, hospital beds, oxygen for COVID-19 patients and medicine, among other things. During this period, public hospitals were under tremendous strain. Even now, they are still struggling to meet the increased demand for hospital care. Despite the foregoing challenges, in the same period, a new approach known as COVID-19 Emergency Corporate Social Responsibility (ECSR) emerged in Zambia. This served as one way to strengthen public hospitals to cope with the increased number of patients. To this end, through COVID-19 ECSR, the private sector supported public hospitals by donating inter alia, money, PPE, oxygen concentrators, medicine and food. From the study, it was discovered that the private sector’s contributions during the pandemic helped to improve and maintain Zambians’ health after fortifying public health systems to cope with the increased demand for health services and other shocks. In this chapter, we explore how ECSR had assisted public hospitals in Zambia to deal with the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic. We base our analysis and discussion on the aforementioned study.