IXL Social Enterprise Case Studies Chronic Diseases October, 2013 | Page 15

Improving Chronic Disease Care in Slums by 2019

Social enterprises may be the best
option to address this issue
Social enterprises deliver both social impact and business profit. They deliver social impact by
improving the health and well-being of the world’s most vulnerable people. While social enterprises
can be either for-profit or not-for-profit organizations, they all aim to utilize a pricing strategy
that will create a sustainable, consumer or partner-driven business model. This helps reduce or
eliminate dependence on donations and cash injections. Slums will benefit from the emergence
of more social enterprises – particularly those focused on prevention, diagnostics, treatment, and
sustainable care to chronic disease (Figure 13).
“In order to stem this crisis and alleviate
the burden on those working to survive
on just a few dollars a day, we must offer
prevention strategies, early diagnosis,
and effective healthcare infrastructures
in urban and peri-urban communities.
Social enterprises, which creatively
combine the tools used by governments,
NGOs, and the private sector, offer some
of the most promising opportunities for
innovation in these areas.”
- President Clinton

Figure 13. Social enterprises may be best suited to address chronic care in slums

Social enterprise in motion
A social enterprise called Access Afya is
creating a network of paperless “health
kiosks” that offer basic healthcare services
for slum dwellers in Kenya. Kiosks are
staffed with a nurse and community
health worker and use an electronic
patient management system and text
messages for communicating with
patients. To make each mini-clinic a selfsustaining operation, every patient pays
a small fee. In first six months, more than
500 patients from Nairobi slums have
used and paid for these health services.
Source: http://www.accessafya.com/

Addressing pain points along the chronic disease timeline (Figure 14) will improve solutions for
slum dwellers throughout the developing world. Bigger, better, bolder, faster and cheaper solutions
are needed in all parts of this chain: from manufacturing to distribution channels to treatment and
continued care. Solutions that integrate the participation of slum dwellers are considered even
more interesting because they create employment, purpose, and economic wealth for these
individuals.86 Robust and scalable business solutions that create economic wealth across the value
chain for all stakeholders are needed to improve care for people suffering from non-communicable
diseases in slums.

Figure 14. Solutions should work with specific intervention points to make targeted impact

Efforts are already in place to create solutions around food security and education. For that reason,
we encourage solutions that focus on the early identification of chronic diseases, their treatment
and care.

Version 2.0, January 2014

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