Celebrating five years of impact with Last Mile Health
For the last five years, Virgin Unite has supported Last Mile Health to achieve its vision of ensuring that a health worker is within reach of everyone, everywhere – even if they live in a remote community.
In 2018, Last Mile Health, along with Living Goods, was selected as an Audacious Project. Its audacious goal was to bring health care to 34 million people in six countries in East and West Africa by 2022.
The Audacious Project, housed at TED, was brought to life through the collaboration of some of the most respected names in the non-profit and philanthropy worlds, including the Skoll Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Scott Cook and Signe Ostby and more. Virgin Unite is proud to be one of the partners that has supported incredible organisations like Last Mile Health.
Over the last five years, Last Mile Health has achieved some significant milestones. In 2019, it launched the Within Reach three-year plan, committing to work in Liberia which launched and scaled a national community health worker programme (in partnership with the government of Liberia) and to partnering with governments in three other countries to support community healthcare programmes.
Last Mile Health has also launched government partnerships in Ethiopia, Malawi and Sierra Leone. Across these three countries, plus Liberia, over 12,000 community and frontline workers have been deployed to provide 12 million people with essential primary healthcare.
During the pandemic, Last Mile Health worked with government partners to train and protect community and frontline health workers to safely prevent, detect and respond to COVID-19. This included delivering health services in Liberia and Malawi, and ensuring that all community health workers received access to COVID-19 vaccines.
Studies have shown that professional community health workers reduce child mortality, improve maternal outcomes, and provide essential surveillance and response during disease outbreaks. Last Mile Health remains committed to scaling this proven, life-saving intervention, to reach more patients in need and be better prepared for future health crises.
Over the next five years, Last Mile Health is looking to influence the transformation of community health financing through an exciting new initiative, Africa Frontline First. It wants to deepen its work with the governments in Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi and Sierra Leone (and potentially one or two additional countries in Africa) to improve community health systems to expand access to life-saving primary care for patients living in last mile communities.
Visit Last Mile Health to find out more.