Dear friend,
There is a brilliantly hopeful future within our reach. A future where no mother dies in childbirth, and every child celebrates their fifth birthday. A future where no pain goes unexamined because a patient cannot reach the clinic, no illness is left untreated because of the cost. Where governments are supported to take the lead in providing quality health care for all their citizens, and to build a health system that reaches patients rapidly through trusted health workers. This is the future our patients deserve.
Our bold future will not happen by chance, nor is it inevitable. We will achieve it only by moving together, in swift, conscious effort alongside our government partners and other allies. No one person or entity will do it alone. Rather, it is each of us taking steps in a collective march toward quality, proactive, universal health care. Every few steps, we reach the door of one more patient. Together, our Community Health Workers have provided more than five million patient home visits since beginning their work more than a decade ago.
Our frontline health care workers are the changemakers who have made our progress possible, providing quality care to patients in their homes and in the clinics. In the first nine months of 2019 alone, courageous nurses, midwives, doctors, and Community Health Workers brought care to our 350,000 patients through over one million home visits and nearly 100,000 clinic visits. Many of these health systems changemakers began this work when the result was not promising.
In 2008, for every 1,000 children born in Yirimadio, Mali, 154 would die before their fifth birthday. By 2015, that number had decreased to 7 in every 1,000.
Our patients and health workers know better than anyone that these changes in health outcomes are not just numbers, they are the smiles on our patients’ faces, new opportunities for entire families, neighbors caring for and supporting one another, and whole communities thriving. They know this change requires courage, to meet patients where they are, even in moments of crisis. As a conflict fueled by extremist groups has threatened 140,000 of the patients we serve this year, the Muso team renewed our commitment to our patients every day. We launched an emergency response to support the victims of violence, and most importantly continued to serve each day, in the clinic and in the home. At a time when access to care could have plummeted, access to care actually increased compared to before the conflict, because of the Muso team, our patients, and all of you—we rose together to defend the right to health care.
Led by our patients, we have blazed trails beyond what was thought possible, and together, we created a health system that delivers justice to its patients. And we’re far from finished: next year, Muso will accompany the governments of Mali and Côte d’Ivoire to deliver on their bold commitments to national health care reform. The 41 million citizens of Mali and Côte d’Ivoire are counting on their governments and on all of us to deliver. We now have the opportunity and the duty to bring the outcomes we’ve seen in the communities we serve to patients across Mali and beyond. It is time to rise to the occasion and work toward the promise of early health care for all. Will you join us?
In solidarity,
Ari Johnson & the Muso Team
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