Finding the right medicine at the right price was once a lottery – now the crowdsourcing service I set up is bringing down the cost of illness
In July 2015, as my 82-year-old grandmother, Sophie Mafuku, lay dying of a terminal illness in Zimbabwe, I spent a day speaking to fellow pharmacists as I tried to fill her morphine prescription. If it takes 24 hours for the grandmother of a well-connected medical professional to access scarce drugs, I thought, how long is it taking people with no connections? It set me off on a journey.
In Zimbabwe, systemic shortages are common. Sometimes, only a handful of pharmacies have particular drugs in stock. The shortages are caused by well-documented economic challenges, which affect Zimbabwe’s capacity to manufacture or import medicines.
