Public healthcare innovations by startups working in Africa

Africa’s public healthcare problems are as diverse and massive as its people and its landmass. The WHO reports the continent’s populations continue to suffer from AIDS/HIV and Ebola virus epidemics; incidents of childhood diseases like Polio; diseases eliminated in first world countries but still plaguing third world countries like leprosy and malaria; and high mortality rates among newborns and mothers. With big problems like these, these healthcare startups are offering much-needed hope.

Virtue Oboro invented a foldable crib which treats neonatal jaundice and started her enterprise Crib A’Glow. Crib A’Glow uses lights to treat jaundice, a dangerous build-up of a liver enzyme called bilirubin in infants. If jaundice is untreated, it can cause weakness in babies, mental development issues, hearing loss, and death.

LifeBank began when its founder Giwa-Tubosun realized how a lack of a centralized blood bank in Nigeria had made it difficult for women who were giving birth to get transfusions. These women may die. Giwa-Tubosun used her previous experience as an administrator for WHO and used blockchain tags connected to donor files on a managed database to get a data-driven blood bank going.

InStrat Global Health Solutions, on the other hand, aims to replace paper health records to help health workers provide efficient health care. Health workers catch medical information through an app and store it in a database for later access by doctors.

The healthcare infrastructure in Africa lacks the equipment and investments to effectively combat the issues plaguing it. But, where there are gaps, there are solutions. And startups who offer them. It’s not an easy landscape to work in medically, but there’s still plenty of hope because of these organizations.

Margaret L. Salmon, M.D., spent 15 years as an entrepreneur before joining the medical community. She finished her medical degree at the University of Washington School of Medicine before completing her residency in Emergency Medicine at the University of California San Francisco. More on Dr. Salmon and her work here.