Inteleos Gets Sustainable Financing Advice to Help Improve Maternal Mortality In Kenya

Nov. 1st, 2022

Only 17% of mothers received basic maternal and fetal health interventions in low-income countries. Inteleos, a global non-profit focused on delivering high standards of global healthcare through proficient clinicians, wants to address this problem. They are launching an initiative focused on reducing maternal mortality by training midwives and clinical officers in Africa in the use of ultrasound. The goal is to create a pipeline of women taking care of women through “train the trainer” programs and ultimately reduce maternal mortality in Kenya by 10% in five years.

For this initiative to be successful, Inteleos needs to develop a sustainable financial model for its program.  Dale R. Cyr, CEO and Executive Director of Inteleos, Pamela Ruiz, Chief Business Development Officer, and Hannah Mason Simmons, Director of Business Development, reached out to KIN to help answer this question. KIN hosted a 90-minute Catalyze Session that included Knowledge Partners Amir Banifatemi, Angela Homsi, Colin Boyle, Dan Beck, Nikhil Kacker and Peter McCrea. This group of Knowledge Partners had a tremendous amount of experience, several in global healthcare. They provided ideas in capacity-building funding, how to put a micro-finance economic model in place that ensures long-term sustainability, how to support clinicians’ ability for training and certification in higher skills, how to get health systems to pay to ensure their clinicians are trained and certified, and how to ensure device manufacturers have a sustainable program to ensure clinicians continually have the most up to date devices. Pamela Ruiz said “The specific feedback received was incredibly useful in terms of some of our next steps.”

Each Knowledge Partner made a pledge to Inteleos to help them get closer to developing a sustainable financial model.  This will enable Inteleos to improve maternal fetal outcomes through diagnostic ultrasound in Kenya and ultimately branch out to the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa, Native American Tribal Lands, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia.