IWD 2024: Zuri Health

Problem:

• Limited access to essential and affordable healthcare services.

• Disproportionately affecting the rural and underserved communities, constituting more than two-thirds of the population.

• High cost, lack of infrastructure, inequitable distribution of healthcare facilities.

Solution:

• Zuri Health makes accessing healthcare accessible and affordable through their comms platforms available through their app, website, WhatsApp chatbot, and SMS services.

• Anyone who has a phone (even without data) can use Zuri Health for as little as $0.10 cents.

• Normally visiting the nearest health centre to receive basic healthcare is $5-10

• Normal cost lowered by 99%

Bayer

We partnered with Bayer to Empower Africa's women to increase access to contraceptives for women across Africa. Collaboratively, we are participating in facilitating Bayer's vision of providing 100 million women worldwide with access to contraception by 2030.

During Pre-Launch, we have been able to provide 174 with modern contracep- tives and we expect the pilot program in Kenya to target 54,167 women during a 6-month period, with a focus on adolescents and women aged 20-29 who have the highest unmet needs for family planning.

Safaricom M-Pesa

We partnered with the Safaricom M-Pesa Foundation to run sponsored medical camps across various counties, effectively reaching rural and underserved communities.

We held 6 camps to provide essential healthcare services to 12,442 people

Impact Stats:

We have enabled over 1,000,000 people to consult with a doctor at their convenience

Titilola Olaolu-Hassan

Co-Founder and COO, Zuri Health

Titilola, raised in Lagos, Nigeria. She has always been interested in communication writing poetry during her youth but also commercially minded and practical as any founder should be, she used those communication skills to go on to study at university.

She studied and received a BSc in Educational Management/Communications and Language from the University of Ibadan and latterly, a Certificate in Measuring and Improving Business Performance from eCornell University.

While at university she started her first business: In school when the Nigeria government issued licenses to telecoms companies. She had a phone and rented it out to other students. Ever the hard worker, she graduated in 2004 on a Friday and started work the very next Monday.

Passionate about leveraging technology to address African challenges, Titilola is a member of Rising Tide Africa, a network of female angel investors where she invests in and mentors female entrepreneurs. One of the investments closest to her heart is in Arcus360 a female-founded company that helps women switch from wood and fossil fuels to LPG. More women are dying from gasses that they use to cook with that die from Malaria in Africa.

In 2018 she had a medical crisis when she was 6 months into her second pregnancy. One day she felt off, went to the hospital and they told her to go home. She continued to feel worse and had in fact had a placental abruption and needed life saving medical attention. The hospital where she was insured rejected her and for the first time, she experienced what it was like to not have access to healthcare. At the time, she was working in Oil and Gas and was earning in the top 2% of Nigeria - the only reason she survived was her resources.

Even more worryingly that Titilola’s own experience , 8 in every 10 women who came to see her had a bad experence during pregnancy and even though she had known them, many of them had never spoken about it until speaking to her

She then started to explore maternal health further and go to the public health hospitals. Ike who would go on to be her Co-Founder his wife had a very bad experience. This drew her attention to how preventable maternal and infant mortality can be.

In 2021, she received recognition from the Lagos State Health Service Commission for her advocacy for mothers and babies at the Lagos Island Maternity Hospital in Lagos, Nigeria.

In 2022 she took the leap from being on the board of Zuri Health to becoming a Co-Founder and joining the team full time. Always remembering that impact is only sustainable with a commercial model behind it.

Daisy Isiaho

Co-Founder and CPO, Zuri Health

Daisy was born and brought up in Kenya. Daisy studied a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science from Multimedia University of Kenya. At school, she thrived doing maths, puzzles and activities labelled traditionally as “boy” activities.

Her parents are both doctors and being medics themselves, her parents were keen for her to do a Medical degree but she was keen to do a maths focussed course, in fact, anything maths related! Along the way she also wanted to prove that girls can do whatever men do and as one of only 11 women in her class of c.90 men, she had a lot of competition!

Post-university, Daisy developed an interest in apps that make life better and started working with Young Entrepreneurs.

During covid, Daisy was locked down and building multiple apps. She would watch her parents go to work every day in lockdown and wish that not only could they could do their work remotely but also allow their patients to access their expertise remotely.

And so she and Ike started building Zuri Health, they would later be joined by Titilola Olaolu-Hassan.

For the first time ever, her parents deeply understood the app she was working on to the extent that her mum was onboarded onto the app as well!

The initial idea was for a basic telemedicine platform but Covid inspired them to build something more innovative. Ike was diagnosed with a chronic medical condition and as a medic, his wife was able to do some of the lab tests at home. However, that is a privilege few others have! So they decided to incorporate delivery and lab testing with telemedicine

They then further iterated so that people who didn’t have smart phones could also use the service through SMS messages. And created a product that was truly accessible to rural communities who neither have access to healthcare or data

However, it was not without its challenges. Daisy had to upskill her SMS- technical expertise. Licencing was more difficult, they worked with telcos and in house doctors who have specialist training to be able to do text based consultation to maintain quality assurance.

As the Chief Product Officer and Co-founder, she has received accolades such as the Bayer Foundation Women Empowerment Award 2022, recognition as one of the top 25 Women in Digital 2022, and the Women Founder Achievement Award for 2023 by the HealthTech Hub Africa.

A catalyst for change, Daisy serves on boards driving leadership and community impact agendas. Her passion for empowering women in business is evident through her involvement in initiatives like World Women Leading Change (WWLC) and Future Females business school.