We Care Solar

We Care Solar was founded on a vision where all families have access to safe, reliable health care and no women die giving life. Action is urgently needed. Annually, pregnancy complications claim the lives of nearly 300,000 women and over a million newborns, primarily in Africa and Asia, where hundreds of thousands of health centers lack electricity. Without power, midwives struggle by candlelight, doctors postpone surgeries, patients are turned away, and lives are lost. The Elevate Prize can bring us closer to a future of equitable, safe childbirth, amplifying our efforts to address energy poverty and ensure clean energy for healthcare. Action would be driven through:

1.  Leading countrywide programs that demonstrate the feasibility and impact of solar for maternal-newborn care.

2.  Conducting research that “makes the case” for decision-makers.

3.  Building local solar capacity, educating solar innovators, and promoting women as Solar Ambassadors.

4.  Ensuring healthcare is on the sustainable energy agenda and clean energy is on the global healthcare agenda.

5.  Convening meetings and sharing learnings to stimulate others to act.

6.  Showcasing interlinkages of UN SDGs through presentations at international meetings, awards, and UN events.

7.  Raising awareness through social media, television and print.

My ‘aha moment,’ and the birth of We Care Solar, followed a devastating setback. I was a busy obstetrician when a back injury ended my clinical career. I spent a year rehabilitating before entering public health school. While conducting ethnographic research on maternal mortality in Nigeria, I learned health facilities were crippled by a lack of reliable electricity. Clinicians struggled to treat critically ill patients by candlelight, kerosene lanterns and flashlights. Witnessing countless complications and tragedies, I felt compelled to be a voice for women dying in silence.

My husband and I designed a compact prewired solar electric system for maternal healthcare. Hospital deaths plummeted. After receiving worldwide requests for our technology, we established a non-profit, assembled a team, and partnered with international organizations to deliver our sustainable Solar Suitcases to remote health centers.

We founded We Care Solar to save lives in childbirth by addressing global energy poverty with clean energy.  Solar Suitcases have provided essential lighting, emergency communication, and medical devices for over 6,000 frontline facilities.

No woman should die giving life. We will achieve success when all health workers have the power to save lives, and mothers and babies no longer die of preventable causes during childbirth.

Every year, over 300,000 women and one million newborns die from pregnancy and childbirth complications. Most of these deaths are preventable. Bright light, emergency communication devices, and functional medical equipment are essential for effective healthcare delivery, particularly during COVID-19. Yet 59% of health facilities in LMICs lack reliable electricity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 26% lack electricity altogether (WHO). Electricity is critical for providing prompt, life-saving care during childbirth. The lack of light reduces quality of care, impairs infection control, and causes life-threatening delays. 

We Care Solar delivers clean energy solutions at scale to save lives in childbirth. Our Solar Suitcases makes solar electricity simple, accessible, and sustainable, powering medical lighting, emergency communication, fetal heart rate monitoring, and medical devices. Through our Light Every Birth initiative, we systematically address healthcare electrification challenges by 1) distributing rugged, reliable solar electric equipment to health facilities in remote environments, 2) building local technical capacity in solar installation and maintenance, 3) training healthcare workers to operate our equipment, 4) building rich partnerships with health ministries, international NGOs, UN agencies, and solar providers, 5) engaging key policy makers, and 6) leading countrywide initiatives demonstrating the feasibility, impact, and affordability of clean energy for all health clinics.

The Solar Suitcase is the only institutional-grade, pre-wired off-grid solar electric system developed specifically to solve healthcare energy needs in remote, underserved parts of the world. It gives every health worker critical life-saving power.  The expandable Solar Suitcase is safe, easy-to-install and easy-to-use. It features four water-resistant, break-resistant medical-surgical LED lights, USB ports for charging phones and tablets, and 12VDC charging ports for additional devices. An electronic fetal heart rate monitor assesses fetal wellbeing during labor. An infrared thermometer supports infection control protocols. The system was designed for harsh environments and durability. It can be used in temporary or permanent settings and includes all installation hardware. High-efficiency, bright medical lights last 70,000 hours; the maintenance-free lithium battery lasts 5-years before easy replacement. The system is sized to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Our innovation extends to implementation science. Our programs empower local communities, foster local ownership, and promote long-term sustainability. We partner with local ministries to identify the health centers most in need of our programs, collaborate with governments, UN agencies and local NGO partners to conduct key activities, and co-create strategies for ongoing maintenance and sustainability, augmenting existing infrastructures.

We Care Solar's robust technology and replicable programs are designed to impact under-resourced health workers and impoverished communities at scale. Primary beneficiaries include (1) Families needing frontline health services (50 million beneficiaries impacted), (2) Pregnant mothers and newborns (7.5 million served), and (3) Health workers in remote health centers (26,000 reached). Our training programs build capacity in solar installation, operation, and servicing (800 trained), giving work opportunities to local technicians and promoting women as trainers. Our national Light Every Birth initiatives leverage partnerships to reach scale. This initiative promotes energy access in public health centers in countries with high rates of maternal mortality and low electrification, including Sierra Leone, Liberia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nepal, and Nigeria. Our program evaluations document impact. Amref conducted a 3-year, multi-intervention trial of We Care Solar Suitcases in 100 Ugandan health facilities showing an 80% increase in night-time deliveries, 50% decrease in maternal mortality and 63% decrease in perinatal deaths. Program evaluations by Pathfinder in Nigeria and Tanzania demonstrated similar findings, further supported by a recent Harvard RCT. By reducing maternal-newborn mortality, our programs significantly impact communities. When mothers survive childbirth, children are more likely to be educated, well-nourished, and families can be more productive.