Muso cut infant mortality by over 90% in Mali with door-to-door healthcare

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In parts of West Africa, getting sick used to mean navigating a maze of barriers — distance, cost, time spent away from work — before ever seeing a health worker. Muso set out to change that.

Working hand-in-hand with governments, they built a model where professional community health workers bring care directly to patients’ doors within 24 hours, at no cost. And because these health workers are from the communities they serve, trust in the new process is already built in; they’re not strangers showing up at the door. In addition to the community health worker program, a big part of Muso’s work includes upgrading primary care clinics — through rehabilitating infrastructure and training clinic staff — to better accommodate patient referrals when home care is too complex.

The impact has been historic, resulting in an over 90% drop in infant mortality rates in Mali alone. Today, governments across the region are funding and scaling the model themselves, bringing it to over 12M people and growing.

This video The community healthcare model transforming lives across West Africa is featured on Big Think .