The University of Warwick professors lead vital project to improve health services in slums across Africa and Asia

Funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Global Health Research Unit on Improving Health in Slums is working to map health services across slums in Africa and Asia. The project launched in 2017 and The University of Warwick has followed their progress through to 2021, when our partner University, The Aga Khan University in Pakistan, prepared a short documentary for the cause.

Many of the world’s poorest people live in slums, which are over-crowded neighbourhoods often made up of makeshift or derelict housing. With more than a billion people living in slums in low- and middle-income countries, there’s often no running water, poor sanitation, and people are subject to numerous health issues including dangerous childbirth, malnutrition, and infectious diseases.

The project team planned to map and understand the current health services and facilities in seven slums across Asia and Africa. They also identified the costs associated with how these health services run in each slum, including costs to the patients and their households.

The final result saw the team developing a competitive proposal to improve health service delivery through digital innovation – an outcome that will have a large impact on those living in LMICs by reducing morbidity and mortality at populational level, at the smallest possible cost to both the individuals seeking healthcare and wider society.

In 2021, the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) led a webinar and shared the results of this project. They discussed outcomes, how to strengthen health systems in order to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and explored the use of mobile consulting as an option to increase healthcare access in urban slums.