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The Project leader

Name of the project leader : Anne Roos-Weil
Name of the organisation : Pesinet
Note from the project leader : I grew up in a family of doctors : that's why, early on I became aware of the importance of public health and convinced that access to primary healthcare was an essential need. This sensitivity can easily explain my commitment in the Pesinet pilot programme in Mali. I found in this entrepreneurial adventure the combination of two important sides of my personality: my interest in concepts and their development, and the research of a concrete and meaningful activity.
Number of employees : Less than 10
Date of creation : 2007
Web site

The Sponsor

Brand : PPR siege

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In pictures

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Pesinet: healthcare in Africa, differently

Field	Social Entrepreneurship
Country	Mali
City	Bamako
Beneficiaries	Malian women and children
Number of beneficiaries	More than 2,000

The Project

Purposes

The NGO Pesinet was created with a view to fight against infant and maternal mortality. It aims at compensating for the weaknesses of existing public health systems and offering an affordable medical service for the prevention, detection and early treatment of simple pathologies, thanks to regular follow-ups of essential sanitary information.
Pésinet offers a community e-health service for low income populations. It integrates prevention and treatment and is based on the work of health representatives within the community and on a real-time medical follow-up system enabled by mobile technologies.
After a year of experimentation and field study, the project's true activity started in early 2008 in Mali, with the long-term goal to spread the system to others countries with high infant and maternal mortality rates.

Activities

- Pesinet health representatives make weekly house calls to weigh children, identify key symptoms and educate on basic hygiene.
- The sanitary information, including high-risk cases is communicated in real-time by phone to the nearest community medical centre.
- Beneficiaries have access to a free medical examination and to half-price medication, 24 hours after the examination by the health representative.
- The monthly subscription to this service costs less than 1€ per child, the equivalent of a daily salary for 90% of the population, and covers: regular health check-ups performed by a representative, online follow-up, medical consultations and access to affordable medication (50% off regular retail prices).
- Each unit enables the medical follow-up of more than 1,000 children subscribers.
Working in partnership with emerging countries' public health systems, this service enables to:
- lower infant and maternal mortality by more than 50%,
- raise family awareness on prevention,
- empower women,
- create jobs,
- develop the competencies of local workers.

Women are at the heart of this model:
● As clients:
- they take out the subscription for their young children and convince the head of the family of the legitimacy of the service;
- later, they will be able to subscribe for their own pregnancy follow-up.
● As actors of change in their community and relays of prevention messages:
- Pesinet recruits committed and enterprising women, and trains them to become health representatives and ambassadors of the service in their neighbourhoods.
- Women are empowered and their role as health representatives for their families is promoted.

Project's sustainability

- A commercial system, based on a monthly subscription to foster a lasting change in the sanitary status of developing countries.
- Each local programme achieves self-financing status during the first year of operation and enables the follow-up of a thousand subscribers.
- The association's financing needs reach €1,326,500 until complete self-financing of the structure in 2020, with the anticipated opening of 130 perennial and self-sufficient local programmes.
- Grants from contributors help cover activity costs until local programmes achieve a self-financing status, particularly equipment investment costs, wages and expenses related to technical assistance missions provided by the association, as well as organisational costs linked to developing the project and reaching more families.

Support and Monitoring

The foundation's support

The PPR Foundation awarded Anne Roos-Weil on June 9, 2010. She received a €15,000 grant and will be sponsored by a manager of PPR on a key skill to develop her project, during one year.

Expected results

- An experimental site in the Bamako Coura neighbourhood, in Mali, with the following initial achievements: 340 registered children, 90% recovery rate, 1 local doctor involved, 2 health representatives and 1 coordinator recruited, 20% of children examined every month
- 2010: operational strengthening of the urban pilot-project and launching of a rural area experimentation.
- Study on the opening of a pregnancy follow-up service.
- 2012: deploying new sites in Mali and launching a pilot-programme in another Sub-Saharan African country.
- Starting in 2015: the programme will be implemented in 3 countries, with a light national coordinating framework and strong partnerships with local partner organisations.
- Objective 2020 : more than a hundred sites.