MOBIKLINIC UGANDA

In Africa, over 350 million people live in last mile/remote villages. In Uganda, 25 million people live in last Mile villages. These face difficulty in accessing health care. Pregnant women are the most affected. When sick and in need of maternal health services, on e has to walk over 12 kilometres to the nearest health centre. Pregnant women resort to local medicines and traditional-birth attendants, many of whom are unskilled and modus operandi is gambling. As a result over 25 women die every day while giving birth in Uganda and many of these are from rural and remote areas. My solution proposes leveraging on community members to expand health work force and creating a digital safety net to ensure quality of maternal health services rendered. My solution is easy to replicate globally and can save the over 150,000 women who die annually in Africa and save millions globally. 

Working to solve access to maternal health and infant health services in rural and remote areas of Uganda. I come from Buikwe district in Uganda, in my community i observed how pregnant women suffer while carrying pregnancy and walking long distances for health services. I saw young women dying in the hands of unskilled traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs). It convicted me to do something about access to health services and health equality fro rural and remote ares especially maternal health access. 

 STATISTICS; WHO indicates that in Uganda over 11000 women die annually while giving birth. over 80% of these come from rural and remote areas of the country. In Africa, over 150,000 women die annually due to pregnancy related complications , many of which would have been prevented if there was access to quality maternal health care in grass root communities. Globally, we have a pregnant woman dying each minute esp in last mile areas

FACTORS;

The difficulty in access to maternal health services is largely due to two things;

1. Very distant health centers. Due to the unavailability of modern health care, people turn to local means

2. Very few or no quality health personnel in rural communities

Firstly, watch the video of the origin of my idea; https://www.facebook.com/mobiklinicUganda/videos/253441565931614

Many times we have digital solutions that are completely out of touch with effective probe solving on the ground. With no hyperbole, i categorically state that our solution is a solution the world need; One that is a fusion of digital and physical interventions/components. Such is what will effectively solve the problem on the ground. 

Our solution involves the following;

1. Physically; Recruiting and training Community members to partake in the work of health care, thereby increasing the health work force and having these trained community members as community Health Promoters. Such that in just a radius of 1 kilometres, there is access to maternal healthcare for any rural pregnant woman. 

2. Digital; Because we now have a work force whose services we must counter check, we created a digital safety net. This is a digital app through which CHPs (Community Health Promoters) use to consult more senior medics when need arises and again this app offers an integrated system of referrals. All these aimed at giving quality health care in the communities; quality maternal health care and quality infant health care services. 

My solution ;

1. Pregnant women and infants in rural and remote areas of Uganda i.e Buikwe district

2. People in last mile areas

We carried out an extensive and holistic  5 month research to find out what they need and also their feedback enabled us build a patient centric app. 

Mu solution will revolutionize access to maternal health care, infant health care and general health care in rural and remote /lats mile areas. 

Many counties in Africa and globally have high maternal deaths, which deaths would otherwise have been prevented if at all the victims had access to maternal health care services that are of good quality. The rural population  s often forgotten in good service delivery in Uganda, the few doctors we've do not want to work in rural areas,there is no good pay.  My solution s simply saying let us leverage on enabling community members partake in health care work, these become first respondents to pregnant women. Then let us create a digital safety net to ensure quality of services rendered. 

1. CONVENIENCE POWER; Our Community health workers offer door to door services. This enables them to treat patients in the comfort of their homes. Home based health care service is unprecedented in Uganda

2. Our concept of digital safety net is the first of its kind in the world, it enables a doctor remotely treat but passing through an intermediate person who is a trained community personnel . The concept of digital safety net we propose is the first of its kind in Africa and the world. Little wonder this idea was crowned by sandoz hack 2019 as best health access idea globally. 

3. Our application is connected to an emergency van that can take medics to the patents home in severe cases and also we have strategic partnerships with hospitals and health centres and their ambulances thus this is part of the integrated referral system entailed on our application. 

The technology of digital safety net is the most unique feature of our solution, it provides a comprehensive interface platform between doctors and community workers and hospital chains. The patent n the community does not need the app, it is catered for by the CHP. It is this way because in our rural and remote areas, smart phone penetration is low and illiteracy levels. Having the app in the hands of community workers is the best thing we could do since it is them that need in while giving service

Here are 2 videos of evidence;

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObJVxQqGBVM&t=4s

2.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhtA1U2_29k&t=41s

My theory of change is that if we leverage on our very own community members and allow them to partake in health care, train them and deploy them back in communities and create digital safety nets for their services. The problems of difficulty in access to health care and difficulty in access to maternal health care will be history. 

Currently we have impacted 2000 people in total; 350 of these being pregnant women and 400 being infants.

see;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhtA1U2_29k&t=41s

  In one year, we are building capacity to serve directly 2500 pregnant women and  a total of 10,000 people in Buikwe district. Buikwe has a population of 450,000 people. 

In 5 years, we anticipate to have branches in Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania reaching a million people since our work is easy to replicate and solve health access problems everywhere. 

We want to impact 1 million lives in the next 5 years. We want to have started expanding to neighbor countries.

in the next year, we envision impacting 10,000 people and thereafter we spike in levels of capacity and impact

We want to raise 100,000 dollars over the next year and 4 million dollars over

ALSO; To improve maternal health care by providing affordable mobile maternal services. 2.To reduce on national maternal death rates while giving birth by half in 2022

Existing players in the industry such as government health centres

-Poor road network in rural areas. This makes transportation very difficult.

- Inadequate funds to pay and maintain doctors on salary roll and other members of the team.

- some medicines are temperature sensitive and if badly kept on long distances can get spoilt.

We will certainly solve the barriers by identifying neglected markets or weaknesses of the competitors and making them our strong points. Also important to note that there is an unfinishable market in the health industry because people have health issues day and night, and existing facilities or clinics can never be enough to handle the numbers. We come in to tap into this existing opportunity already. We plan to use 4-wheel drive cars in areas of poor road network to combat the threat of poor road network because that is all we can do about the poor roads. We plan to use solar energy to store temperature sensitive medicines in cases where we are moving with such medicines on a long journey. As regards the threat of being expensive to pay doctors, we will start with few doctors (three in number) who will work in shifts and be available full time on the mobile clinic. We plan on first harnessing and consolidating on the energies of few doctors, who will train Community Health Providers (CHPs) further. Utilising CHPs is the solution to the challenge of expensive city doctors. 

20  total , 10 beinf full time

5 part time and 5 contract

We have the zeal, passion and burring fire to end maternal deaths. My team is diverse, well experienced and together we are a pool of the ideal team to revolutionize access to maternal health world over. 

1. Norvatis international

2. Clarke university uganda

3. African leadership academy south africa/ anzisha prize