Bringing healthcare to the people - the last mile
From articles by Living Goods
There is an urgent challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa: people are dying from treatable illnesses like malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea. The traditional model is that families find their way to a doctor or a hospital for their healthcare needs. But millions of families live in hard-to-reach communities that may be hours—or days—from the nearest clinic.
That’s why Community Health Workers—paid, professionally trained members of these local communities—are bringing primary health services straight to their neighbours’ doorsteps. Empowered with sophisticated training, supervision, and digital tools, Community Health Workers extend the reach of the healthcare system to rural and remote communities.
And it’s working: the Community Health Worker model as developed by Living Goods have been proven to dramatically reduce mortality rates for pregnant women and their children. A randomized controlled trial in Uganda showed that Living Goods-supported community health workers reduced under-5 mortality by 27% and stunting by 7%, all for less than $2 per person annually.
Now, governments and NGOs are partnering to ensure this model can grow globally to ensure everyone, everywhere can access lifesaving healthcare.
Living Goods is a nonprofit operating in Kenya,, Uganda and Myanmar. They leverage a powerful combination of technology, training, and quality treatments that empower government community health workers (CHWs) to deliver quality care to their neighbours’ doorsteps. These CHWs also earn meaningful compensation through sale of products such as solar lights and stoves, etc and enhance their stature in the process, reinforcing a virtuous cycle of trust and increasing sustainability of the model.
They are also fanatical about numbers. By maintaining their focus on measurable data, they’ve found technology and analytics are valuable allies in driving cost-effective, high-quality community health programs. We use data in end-to-end operations, from real-time performance management to preventing stock-outs of essential medicines, monitoring disease outbreaks, ensuring equity in treatment, and closing gaps in patient referrals to full-service health facilities.
Watch this 5 min video:
Retweet about this article:
From articles by Living Goods, 30/10/2019