New health deal heals Ugandans
London – Imagine living so far from a doctor that getting medication for your feverish child involved a day’s travel and countless hours of waiting, only to be told the drugs aren’t available.
A social enterprise in Africa is tackling this problem by getting an army of well-stocked healthcare workers to go to the sick.
In doing so, Living Goods has reduced the number of deaths of children under five by more than a quarter in areas where it works in Uganda, according to a 2014 study.
The Living Goods model overcomes travel barriers that hinder healthcare delivery, ensures medication is available and its low costs make it an attractively affordable investment for African governments, said the enterprise’s president, Shaun Church.
“It’s a real African thing, people looking after their own neighbours – that’s the juice that makes so much of this work,” Church told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“And every dollar spent on community health gets a 10 to one return for a country through increasing productivity.”
Living Goods employs 7 200 people as community health promoters in Uganda and Kenya who offer health checks and sell medication for common ailments, such as malaria and diarrhoea.
They also offer products that improve living standards and cut household costs, such as solar lights and clean cook stoves, and supply contraceptives. The workers register pregnant women and record details of consultations on smartphones which alert the healthcare worker by text of regular check-up dates for the expectant mother.
No salaries are on offer; the promoters earn by buying medicines and products from Living Goods and keeping the profits. Because every visit is logged on a smartphone, random checks ensure no opportunistic profiteering takes place.
In 2014 a survey by three universities of 8 000 families in 200 villages in Uganda found that Living Goods had reduced child mortality by 27%. Such an impact is much needed. Uganda’s population is growing by more than a million a year, with 66,000 under fives dying each year, according to the UN. –