Benign diseases account for more than 50% of the causes of death among young children in Africa. In Mali, 1 in 5 children dies before age the age of 5. Yet these deaths could easily be prevented if these simple diseases were detected early enough.

The international NGO Pesinet innovates and develops the health system in Mali with amazing results. Its approach is based on a technological facility, the mobile phone, and an ethnographic field observation: if the symptoms are not detected early enough, it is because children do not have access to health centers. Pesinet has therefore invented a new ecosystem of care pathways that calls children with symptoms of childhood illnesses in the dispensaries.

How do they work? Pesinet created a new job, the health care field agent, who visits the families and transmits simple health data to the dispensary physicians, via their mobile phone. Medical teams then detect potential risks in these children. Then they simply have to call them for a medical examination. 93% of the notifications to come to the dispensaries reveal a disease that can be treated well in time.

(c) Photo Pesinet