ZimbosAbantu's Solar-Powered Mobile Clinics Deliver Healthcare to Villages in Rural Zimbabwe

Remoteness from care is a major challenge to health services worldwide. Half of the world’s population resides in rural areas, but only 36% of the global nursing workforce lives there. This means infant mortality, maternal death, and poor health outcomes are much prevalent in rural areas than in urban locations.

Telehealth (healthcare delivery via electronic means) has helped in overcoming some barriers, but it requires internet access. One in three people globally will still live in a rural area by 2050, and there is a critical need for healthcare access solutions that are built to work in rural areas.

In rural Zimbabwe, a person who is sick might walk 15 to 20 kilometres to reach a clinic. ZimbosAbantu — a social enterprise in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capita l— has a fleet of mobile clinics that offer medical services to vulnerable populations in the rural and peri-urban areas of the city. Its goal is to reduce the distance that women, youth, and children walk to access primary healthcare from 15km to 3km.

ZimbosAbantu roughly translates to Zimbabwean people. It operates five mobile clinics, offering services like dental care, maternal health, immunization, eye care, and nutrition education.

Each mobile clinic has a wind turbine and solar panels generating enough power for a 190-litre vaccine freezer. They are equipped with examination rooms, vital monitoring machines, diagnostic kits, and medications. They operate 12 hours a day and are staffed full-time by health professionals. Each clinic serves an average of 18-20 patients per day, or about 1000 patients per month.

The social enterprise was founded by Chiedza and Tawanda Mushawedu in 2021. Chiedza serves as the organization’s executive director and previously worked for a private hospital. While working there, she saw people suffering from undiagnosed chronic conditions and dying from treatable conditions, “simply because care was out of reach.”

ZimbosAbantu offers a "subsidised healthcare” scheme to solve “affordability disparities.” Men, women, and youth are organized in groups of 10 or 20, and each member pays about $3 every month for access to healthcare, drugs, and other benefits. About 1,000 people are currently enrolled in the scheme.

Remoteness from care is a wide-scale problem that needs a similarly-sized solution. ZimbosAbantu has recently added more vehicles to its fleet and expanded its operations to a second province. In a conversation with Africa Business Radio, Chiedza admits that there is still a large gap to be addressed, and ZimbosAbantu is a drop in the ocean. She emphasizes the need for investors and partners to help expand the organization’s reach and impact.

Zipline is another company working to improve medical access in Africa, but with autonomous drones.