About 4 years in the past, one among Tafadzwa Munzwa’s cousins grew to become pregnant. In the end, she and her child had been okay, however Munzwa was alarmed by the poor high quality of the care she acquired.
That have was Munzwa’s first actual take a look at the problem girls confronted getting top-quality maternal well being care in Zambia, the place they lived, and different nations in Sub-Saharan Africa. So, round two years in the past, he co-founded DawaHealth to develop a screening, profiling and administration maternal healthcare device to deal with the excessive variety of being pregnant and childbirth-related issues resulting in maternal deaths within the area. “We’re democratizing entry to maternal well being care,” he says.
“We’re democratizing entry to maternal well being care,” he says.
Preventable Problems
Munzwa’s imaginative and prescient for the corporate rested on a number of points. One was the excessive variety of deaths from preventable being pregnant and childbirth-related issues in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia—two-thirds of whole international deaths. The opposite: The appreciable variety of healthcare staff in Sub-Saharan Africa who aren’t employed, because of price range constraints; these healthcare staff who’re employed are so overworked, they’re unable to supply high-quality care. On the similar time, most middle-and-low-income households, struggling to make ends meet, can’t afford medical insurance.
His reply was to construct a platform that, mainly, creates distant clinics in communities by tapping that military of unemployed and underemployed first-level clinicians within the area, permitting them to supply help to sufferers the place they stay.
Particularly, a community of in-the-field healthcare staff obtain kits with cell instruments to take with them throughout twice month-to-month visits. With these gadgets, they assess their sufferers’ situation after which add the data into the platform to be evaluated by a central medical workforce. Excessive-risk sufferers are referred to the closest well being outposts.
Medical kits embody such gadgets as blood stress and hemoglobin screens and latex gloves, to call a number of examples. The corporate additionally offers instruments for screening infants for congenital or prenatal infections, plus moveable ultrasound scans and tablets. Earlier than starting their work with sufferers, healthcare brokers obtain coaching on their cell gadgets.
As well as, pregnant girls and nursing moms get entry by way of cell gadgets to weekly well being help in a language of their selection to assist them id doubtlessly pressing well being circumstances in between visits. (It’s additionally obtainable by way of an internet portal and textual content/audio chatbot).
Moms pay a small charge—4 instances cheaper than non-public healthcare, in accordance with Munzwa—and clinicians pay a month-to-month subscription for the medical kits.
Twin Operate
Within the course of, the platform, referred to as DawaMom, performs a twin operate: offering pressing, inexpensive healthcare to girls and making a supply of revenue for unemployed clinicians. Healthcare brokers receives a commission for the ladies they consult with the platform, in addition to for affected person assessments and examinations. Moms obtain a reduction after they refer another person to this system. And, in accordance with the corporate, well being providers are 50% cheaper than these offered by common amenities.
Up to now, the corporate has helped about 4,000 moms via a pilot, in accordance with Munzwa. For the subsequent 5 years, he plans to give attention to increasing the corporate’s maternal care footprint to different areas. By 2027, the purpose is to succeed in about 40% of pregnant girls and nursing moms in Southern Africa. Ultimately he desires to increase to different circumstances, like sickle cell anemia.
DawaHealth was just lately chosen as one among MIT Remedy’s 40 2022 Solver Groups, successful $10,000, plus enrollment in a nine-month mentorship program. Because of the visibility and help of that award, the corporate additionally was one among 5 groups just lately chosen for the The Well being Entry Prize supported by Johnson & Johnson Influence Ventures, a fund throughout the Johnson & Johnson Basis. The winners had been awarded $175,000 in whole.