We're talking about primary healthcare in
Africa and some of the great stuff Last Mile
Health is doing to help that work even better.
My name's Raj Panjabi.
I am a physician and, I am the CEO of Last
Mile Health.
And our work is to train, equip, and pay people
from remote communities as healthcare workers
to essentially go door to door to bring healthcare
to their neighbors' doorsteps.
My parents immigrated to Liberia from India
in the ‘70s.
I was born there and raised there until the age
of nine when a horrific civil war drove hundreds
of thousands of people, including my family,
out.
During medical school, I went back to Liberia
to see if I could serve the people we’d
left behind.
There were just 51 doctors for a country of
four million people.
In rural parts of the country, I was seeing
my patients die from conditions really no
one should die from in the 21st century--
pneumonia, malaria--simply 'cause they were
living days from the nearest clinic.
I started Last Mile Health to save lives in
the world's most remote areas.
Last Mile Health literally means healthcare
for last-mile communities.
Things like testing a child for malaria or
treating a child for pneumonia or using a
measuring tape to screen a child for malnutrition.
Helping a mother organize a birth plan so
she can deliver in a clinic.
These are interventions that are proven to
save millions of lives.
What we've seen is that if we invest in how
they're trained, equipped, and pay them instead
of considering them as volunteers, you can
have some dramatic results.
The Community Health Academy hopes to modernize
the education of community health workers,
using digital content to create the largest
army of community health workers the world
has ever known.
And community members are deeply motivated
to serve their people.
They want to learn.
Over time, governments are willing to pay
for these workers because they actually have
a great return on the investment to society.
Digital training, I'd say that's very much
on the cutting edge, and it's great to be
trying that.
You’re doing some pioneering stuff which
is very exciting.
There’s still millions of people dying from
preventable causes.
Creating a national workforce of community
health workers, we could save millions of lives
in those countries.
