Dear subscriber,
The last mile is where healthcare delivery becomes most expensive and uncertain in Africa, especially for vaccines. A new innovation could ease one of the continent’s biggest vaccine delivery challenges.
Treezer Michelle Atieno - Editor
Vaccines are among the most temperature-sensitive products in African healthcare. Unreliable power and long distances to patients complicates vaccine temperatures which must be kept between 2°C and 8°C from the manufacturer to patient. A new fridge-free vaccine technology could remove that constraint.
A vaccine that can be stored without refrigeration, has passed its first human trial, with results showing safety and immune responses comparable to established vaccines. The vaccine is stored in powder form and mixed with sterile water before injection.
If larger trials of the UK-made vaccines confirm the results, the technology could reduce the expensive infrastructure needed to store and move vaccines in Africa.
Our take: Fridge free vaccines could make vaccines cheaper and easier to get to the places that are hardest to reach in Africa…Read more (2 min)
We have compiled 34 open mid and senior level roles in nutrition, vaccination, technology, pharma manufacturing and infectious disease control across the continent. Among the open jobs we have compiled, East Africa leads with 16 roles, followed by Southern Africa with 8, Central Africa with 6 and West Africa with 4.
Health programme management and technical leadership roles are prominent this month, with multiple openings across Africa, including positions at Nutrition International, Management Sciences for Health, FHI 360, Samaritan’s Purse, Open Health and Save the Children International.
The most active recruiters include Abt Global, Kenya Red Cross, Partners In Health, Management Sciences for Health and ZemiTek, each with two openings.
Click to apply…Read more (2 min)
Three HealthTech startups raised a total of $1.8 million in funding in the month of July 2026, through venture and debt financing. The month's deals show investors backing healthcare infrastructure that address the realities of African markets like diagnostic systems for low-resource settings and health software that operates offline.
The Egyptian company Reme-D attracted the largest investment with $1.5 million, accounting for more than 80% of the month's funding. The company develops diagnostic testing systems for low-resource settings.
Valorigo raised an estimated $100,000 venture round from Digital Africa to strengthen offline healthcare infrastructure while Rwanda's Eden Care raised $200,000 to advance digital healthcare delivery respectively.
Our take: Investors normally see poor infrastructure as a barrier to HealthTech but new funding deals suggest that companies that solve these infrastructure gaps can build commercially valuable products…Read more (2 min)
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Unitaid builds Africa’s capacity to test locally made medicines
Events
🗓️ Register for the World Congress on Public Health in South Africa (Sept 6)
🗓️ Participate in World Health Expo in Kenya (Sept 16)
🗓️ Join the International Conference on Public Health in Ethiopia (Nov 23)
Various
💉Five African countries end polio outbreaks
💉DRC receives 70,000 Ebola vaccine doses to fight Bundibugyo outbreak
💉 East Africa calls for stronger health systems
Seen on LinkedIn
Donfelix Ochieng, a health information systems specialist, says, “Rwanda's community health worker digital programme went from a 600-person pilot to 58,567 Community Health Workers nationwide sequenced deliberately over years, expanding only when evidence from the previous phase supported it. Most digital health programmes in Africa do the opposite: announce national scale ambitions before the pilot results are in, because that is what the funding cycle rewards, even if it doesn’t always work.”