Olivelink Healthcare provides Accessible & Affordable Care to Informal Communities in Kenya
Olivelink Healthcare provides high-quality, accessible, and affordable maternal medical services to communities living in informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya.
Josephine Suleiman founded Olivelink Healthcare in 2012 following her experience working at a hospital and seeing that expectant mothers would have to travel far to be able to access proper healthcare services.
According to Suleiman’s research, of the 5 Million people that live in Nairobi, 50% live in informal settlements where access to healthcare is limited or non-existent. Maternal and infant mortality rates within these communities is 1.5x higher than the national average rate.
“The communities that we serve live in single roomed shelters, built of iron sheets. They lack the very basic amenities like proper sanitation, clean water, electricity, infrastructure, and access to education. These are communities that live on less than a dollar a day.”
Over the past 9 years, Olivelink Healthcare has served over 115,000 patients, with 4,000 women having safe deliveries in their facilities. To date, they have impacted 550,00 lives within the communities they serve.
Suleiman first joined the enpact community by taking part in the Empowering Entrepreneurship Initiative in 2020.
“Without the program, we would never have gone through the COVID-19 period as an organization. The finances that we received played a big role in helping us meet our costs, ensuring that we retained our staff who continued to serve the community without any interruptions. For the three of us who went through the training, we gained invaluable knowledge that we have continued to use up to now. The topic on resilience was my personal highlight.”
In 2022, one year after graduating from the program, Josephine is now working with her team to create a program to provide healthcare support for hearing impairments. In collaboration with another organization, they are also finalizing an agreement to enable them to work with patients to provide affordable, adaptable hearing aids that are tailored to their needs.
“The future looks really great and very exciting. We have remodeled our hospital to be able to serve more people,” Suleiman said, “We are about to launch our outreach program and can’t wait to see the impact we will create.”
To learn more about Olivelink Healthcare and support their work, visit their website.
