Duniya Healthcare Says Its Distribution Model Helped Avert 578 Rural Deaths

Duniya Healthcare, a Zambia-based pharmaceutical and effectively being logistics startup, says it helped rural effectively being facilities avert 578 deaths in six months, nearly double the 299 deaths prevented at comparable facilities that relied on typical procurement packages, in accordance with a model new affect report.

The analysis, carried out by Duniya Healthcare in partnership with the Zambia Conference of Catholic Bishops (ZCCB) and the Africa Nicely being and Monetary Transformation Institute (AHETI), provides quantitative proof linking stronger remedy present chains to lower mortality in rural areas. It tracked 16 Catholic mission hospitals and rural effectively being amenities all through Zambia between January and June 2025. Eight facilities used Duniya’s Rural Distribution Model (RDM) whereas eight others served as administration web sites.

The report comes amid long-running points over Zambia’s fragile medical present chain, the place frequent stockouts and delayed deliveries proceed to undermine rural healthcare.

No matter authorities efforts to stabilise present, most public and faith-based facilities nonetheless rely on inconsistent deliveries from central warehouses or advert hoc procurement by way of private wholesalers. The Duniya analysis provides unusual quantitative proof that bettering distribution effectivity can significantly decrease preventable deaths in distant areas.

To measure deaths averted, researchers adopted a comparative quasi-experimental design, monitoring eight facilities using Duniya’s Rural Distribution Model in the direction of eight administration facilities using typical procurement packages. Every groups operated from January to June 2025. Researchers collected and analysed the data in July-August 2025, making use of condition-specific case fatality costs, drawn from nationwide and peer-reviewed data, to affected particular person remedy data for eight high-burden illnesses, along with malaria, pneumonia, hypertension, and excessive anemia. This technique enabled direct comparability of mortality outcomes between facilities with and with out strengthened present chains.

Pilot facilities recorded the strongest affect in decreasing deaths from malaria, pneumonia, and hypertension. All through the pilot web sites, 311 malaria deaths have been averted, along with 167 from pneumonia and 67 from hypertension points. In contrast, administration web sites averted 56, 87, and 153 deaths, respectively. 

The report attributes the mortality distinction primarily to remedy availability. Providers supported by Duniya achieved 88% availability of necessary medicines, compared with 71 p.c at administration web sites, a 17-point gap that all the time determined whether or not or not victims acquired remedy or have been turned away.

The analysis moreover confirmed that solely 38% of Duniya-supported facilities reported turning victims away ensuing from stockouts, compared with 67% amongst administration facilities. For illnesses with extreme fatality costs, that distinction can indicate survival or demise. “The preferential selection for the poor is our sacred mandate,” said Bishop Evans Chinyemba, who oversees effectively being for ZCCB. “Through this partnership, we’re inserting our faith into movement, ensuring that even these inside the furthest villages acquire the medicines they need to keep.” 

Tempo was one different very important problem. 88% of orders at pilot facilities arrived inside seven days, compared with 63% at administration web sites, a couple of of which waited over two weeks for provide. Duniya’s model aggregates demand from quite a few rural facilities into bulk orders large ample to attract aggressive bids from wholesalers in Lusaka. The platform then breaks down bulk shipments and delivers explicit particular person consignments instantly to each facility at no transport worth. 

“It’s the equivalent neighborhood method that launched telecoms to rural Africa,” said Duniya CEO Mwansa Chalo in an earlier TechCabal interview. “You make scattered demand seen and economically viable.”

The tactic moreover freed up facility budgets. Solely 19% of pilot facilities delayed procurement ensuing from worth constraints, compared with 41% of administration facilities. All pilot web sites adopted predictable month-to-month ordering schedules, whereas 1 / 4 of administration web sites ordered reactively after cupboards have been empty. About 75% of pilot facilities used digital inventory packages, decreasing forecasting errors and drugs wastage, a 12-point enchancment over administration web sites.

Nonetheless, the report found gaps. When stockouts did occur in pilot facilities, some lasted as a lot as 30 days, suggesting publicity to funding or supplier delays. Affordability moreover remained inconsistent, with 62% of all facilities, every pilot and administration, saying medicines have been solely “sometimes cheap.” Administration facilities cited delayed authorities grants, incomplete deliveries from the Zambia Medicines and Medical Offers Firm (ZAMMSA), and extreme transport costs that compelled tradeoffs between purchasing for medicines and defending provide payments. Some pilot web sites moreover reported challenges with emergency orders, the place the standard aggregation course of proved too gradual for urgent desires.

To cope with these weaknesses, Duniya plans to establish emergency buffer shares, secure additional supplier contracts, and simplify charge processes so that facilities can pay Duniya instantly. The company moreover intends to mix additional fastidiously with ZAMMSA to reinforce, moderately than compete with, nationwide packages and assure widespread adoption of digital inventory administration devices all through all supported web sites.

With a five-year contract from ZCCB already secured, Duniya is about to develop its model to additional Catholic mission facilities all through Zambia. The Catholic Church operates over 75 mission effectively being facilities, the nation’s largest faith-based effectively being neighborhood. At current effectivity ranges, the report estimates that nationwide deployment might avert higher than 10,000 deaths yearly.

ZCCB has moreover expressed curiosity in replicating the model in Kenya and Uganda, the place Duniya plans to launch in early 2026. “The 578 lives saved often are usually not merely numbers,” Chalo said on the launch event held on October 20 in Lusaka. “They symbolize mothers, kids, and households given a second chance. This partnership proves that when innovation meets compassion, even basically essentially the most distant communities can entry life-saving care.”

In July 2025, Chalo instructed TechCabal that his goal is to make Duniya crucial pharmaceutical distribution neighborhood in Africa. The company’s latest outcomes suggest that ambition might be not far-fetched.