This project will support Last Mile Health as it recruits, trains, equips, manages, and pays professionalized community health workers - enabling them to provide health services through home visits, serving to heal and restore hope in post-war and post-Ebola Liberia.
Over 1 billion people worldwide lack access to healthcare because they live too far from a health facility. This problem is particularly acute in remote Liberia, where people must often walk for hours across great distances to reach the nearest clinic. Following a decade of civil war, only 50 doctors remained to treat a population of more than 4 million people. This fractured health system led to many anonymous deaths from treatable conditions like malaria and diarrhea in remote communities.
Last Mile Health was founded in 2007 to ensure access to healthcare for all people living in remote areas. Exclusively targeting last mile communities - defined as being more than 5km from the nearest health clinic - it recruits, trains, equips, manages and pays professionalized community health workers (CHWs) to deliver high-quality care to their own communities. The care provided ensures that people living in remote areas have access to the healthcare they need to end preventable deaths.
The Ebola epidemic ultimately exposed the weakness of the Liberian health system. More than 1 million Liberians live many hours and sometimes days from the nearest health facility and beyond the reach of the primary health system. CHWs have the potential to both bridge this gap and serve as the foundation of a strong health system in Liberia. Our goal is to build a community health workforce that enables Liberia to extend equitable health services to everyone, everywhere, every day.
