Hundreds of children, elders, farmers, teachers, and dancers recently came to welcome the Muso team to the rural district of Bankass, where we are preparing to launch the first phase of a health systems study in April 2016. Muso is adapting our rapid delivery healthcare model to reach over 100,000 people in 96 rural villages, bringing access to healthcare unlike anything previously seen in the region.
At the end of this study, Muso will have rigorously tested and refined our model in both the rural and urban contexts. The results could poise Muso’s model for a national and global scale-up, with the potential to make child deaths from treatable illnesses a rare event worldwide.
The Malian Ministry of Health estimates that only 6-17% of people in the Bankass district of Mali have access to adequate healthcare, and only 1 in 10 children under five currently receive effective treatment for malaria within 24 hours.
These are some of the worst health outcomes in Mali and around the world. In response, the Ministry of Health sought Muso’s expertise to help design evidence-based solutions to these injustices.
In early 2017, we will launch a Randomized Controlled Trial to test our proactive health model in this rural setting. Our study will quantify the impact of Muso’s proactive care model to answer some of the key questions the Ministry of Health faces in determining how to change their national healthcare delivery protocol: Does CHW active case finding reduce under-five mortality? Can national budgets afford to do this? Will it help the economy?
In order to meet emergent demand for newly available care in the region, Muso hired and trained Community Health Workers and health center staff. We also worked with MASS Design Group to rehabilitate disused health centers in each of the eight new sites. Improved infrastructure capacity means fewer obstacles to healthcare delivery, and will allow us to provide care to our patients with the dignity they deserve.
We are excited to have you join us as the study unfolds over the next three years. The results of this study will guide the critical next steps on our path to bring life-saving healthcare to the world’s most vulnerable people.
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