Pictured above: Muso team members with senior members of Côte d'Ivoire's Ministry of Health in November 2019.
Dear Muso's Community of Action,
We greet 2021 with a big new commitment. For the first time in Muso’s history, our team will provide care for patients beyond Mali's borders. Today we announce the launch of a long-term partnership with the government of Côte d'Ivoire: over the next decade, in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal targets, we will together pursue rapid, universal access to health care for Côte d'Ivoire's 26 million people, and an end to the country's crises of maternal and child mortality.
Fifteen years ago, a group of Malians and Americans moved in with the communities of Yirimadio, on the edge of Mali’s capital, Bamako. We began to accompany our neighbors as they struggled and failed to access health care in time. We mourned at the funerals of our neighbors, who died because they got care too late, or not at all. We resolved together that no one should die waiting for care.
Together with you, our community of action, we have created a new kind of health system; proactive, community-led care that reaches patients with exceptional speed. Communities we serve in Mali have achieved rates of child death lower than that of any country in sub-Saharan Africa.
Seven years ago, our teammate and Community Health Worker Rosalie Dembélé left her home in Yirimadio and took a bus to visit her relatives in a far away village. Along the way, Rosalie saw a woman get on the bus with her young daughter. Rosalie noticed that the woman's daughter was sick, and needed medical attention. Rosalie did everything she could to help the child, but she found herself far away from her tools, her teammates, and the clinics that Muso supports. “I did my best to help,” Rosalie said, “but it reminded me of how many people need what we’ve built.”
Rosalie was clear that the injustice of delayed health care extends far beyond the communities we directly serve today. We have a moral obligation to reach further, to grow our service. Because everyone, everywhere, deserves access to the care they need, when they need it.
Our Ivorian brothers and sisters face some of the world’s highest rates of maternal and child death. When we launched a technical assistance partnership a year ago, Côte d'Ivoire's Minister of Health Dr. Aouélé Aka told us that the country's maternal-child mortality crisis is his number one priority. A partnership with Muso came from this commitment and determination, his ministry’s work to make their country one where no child dies for want of care, and no mother dies bringing life into the world. Over the past year, we’ve provided technical assistance to the Department of Community Health to build a dedicated supervision strategy for more than 11,000 CHWs across Côte d'Ivoire. We’ve also built the understanding and relationships to launch this long-term, far-reaching partnership. Together with the Ivorian government, we will now partner to deliver proactive care to the patients who need it most, conduct joint research, and support them to build systems that cure delay across their national health care system.
Our team is ready for this next step. Thank you for standing alongside us. Thank you for helping us reach this moment.
With Solidarity and Hope,
Ari and the Muso team