Healthy Entrepreneurs

12 Aug

MLC VANGUARD | Created by Healthy Entrepreneurs

Healthy Entrepreneurs delivers effective and affordable health products and services to the last mile, hard-to-reach populations in Sub Saharan Africa, through a network of 5,000 Community Health Entrepreneurs. Its social business model allows for sustainable health provision to millions of people living rural areas in Africa.

Website

6,250,000 Lives Impacted

Healthy Entrepreneurs' impact on the people living on less than $5 a day is tremendous as access to affordable health services and commodities improves, not only by saving transport costs in accessing health services, but also providing health commodities below current market prices. Providing an average cost saving of 62% on an annual basis for a rural family.

Recent research shows that households living in areas where community health entrepreneurs were active had higher odds of using modern contraceptives and had more knowledge of modern contraceptive methods, sexually transmitted infections and symptoms of sexually transmitted infections (London School of Hygiene, Health Policy and Planning, 2019). In 2020, 20 million impact products were provided to the last-mile, hard to reach areas to treat malaria, prevent unwanted pregnancies and improve the nutritional status of pregnant women and children.

The Innovation

Access to basic health services in rural, hard to reach communities in many Sub-Saharan countries is poor. Many rural families have to travel for more than an hour to receive health information and treatment of diseases. Community Health Workers play a vital role in providing services closer, however traditional Community Health Worker programs suffer from performance, retention and sustainability issues.

Healthy Entrepreneurs provides community health workers with the opportunity to become an entrepreneur. The Community Health Entrepreneur provides basic health services and sells health commodities. The health services and commodities range from personal care to nutrition, family planning and treatment of minor infections. The community health entrepreneur makes a living by selling reliable and affordable high impact products, while improving awareness and knowledge on health in their remote communities. Our 'Doctor@Distance' solution continues to expand the entrepreneur's service provision by a doctor guiding the entrepreneur to screen patients on specific diseases, like hypertension and diabetes, at a distance.

About Healthy Entrepreneurs

Healthy Entrepreneurs’ innovative, sustainable and scalable approach is system changing. Compared to other community based initiatives HE is unique its integrality (horizontal/vertical), technology, end-to-end, supporting processes and the integration with the public health system), lean processes and operating model, and the role for private investors in replication and scale up, due to its innovative business model based on social entrepreneurship. Private players do not easily serve hard to reach areas. Traditional community-based initiatives focus primarily on urban and peri-urban areas to keep their costs low and lack a financially sustainable business model. Healthy Entrepreneurs ambition is to grow the network of entrepreneurs to 25.000 by the end of 2023.