Liberia
Building on a decade of partnership, we’re working with the Government of Liberia and local partners to make primary healthcare universal by deploying a paid, professionalized health worker to every rural and remote community.
Country Snapshot
After enduring over a decade of civil war and the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic, Liberia prioritized rebuilding its devastated health system. The need was overwhelming: over 1.2 million people lived more than an hour’s walk from the nearest health facility, and the country suffered from some of the highest maternal and under-five mortality rates in the world.
Rural Population
49%
Child Mortality
71 per 1,000 live births
Maternal Mortality
661 per 100,000 live births
Basic Vaccine Coverage
61%
HIV Prevalence
1.3%
Health Worker Coverage
0.037 doctors per 1,000 people
*Source: The World Bank Group, World Bank Open Data, www.data.worldbank.org
Our Work
Liberia’s Ebola epidemic highlighted the need to build a stronger, more resilient health system that would leave no one behind. Drawing on the successes of our community health worker pilot, we collaborated with the Ministry of Health and partners to design and scale the National Community Health Assistant Program to extend primary healthcare to 1.2 million people living at Liberia’s last mile.
Launched in 2016, the program has transformed access to care. Community and frontline health workers have carried out over 6.3 million home visits; treated and/or screened over 1.8 million childhood cases of pneumonia, malaria, diarrhea and malnutrition; and provided 446,388 women with access to family planning services.
As the program approaches full scale, we are supporting Liberia’s Ministry of Health to:
Design and pilot new interventions in community health
Building on our work in Rivercess County, we’re partnering with the Ministry of Health to identify and pilot service delivery innovations and position them for country-wide scale. This includes deepening the quality of service delivery in programmatic areas such as immunization, nutrition, and family planning.
Improve the quality of care
We’re strengthening malaria treatment, nutrition, family planning, immunization, and disease surveillance. We’re also supporting the Government to improve supply chain and information systems on a national level and expanding the use of digital training tools for performance management and training.
Sustain the national program
We’re partnering with the Ministry of Health to develop and implement long-term financing and cost-effectiveness strategies for the national program.
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