Vaxiglobal, Zimbabwean Health Tech Startup Bags $250,000 Kofi Annan Award
The Kofi Annan Award for Innovation in Africa has been given to Vaxiglobal, a Zimbabwean startup that uses contactless biometrics to reduce waste of immunization resources, improve data quality with open standards, and enable the expansion of immunization campaigns in African nations.
Vaxiglobal will receive a $250,000 cash prize as one of the award’s winners.
The other two winners were Nigeria’s MOBicure, whose product, myPaddi, enables young people in Africa discreet access to sexual health services like access to doctors, counselors, and adult toys, and Kenya’s Flare, a cloud-based system that provides fire relief.
Vaxiglobal’s solution employs a mobile phone to scan patients’ faces and create digital certificates in the cloud. It was co-founded in 2019 by Dr. Integrity Mchechesi, a medical doctor and public health innovation, and Tsitsi Eunice Sifiyali, a physiotherapist and public health expert.
Dr. Mchechesi stated in an interview that “the laboratories produce a digital record in our system after immunization.” “The traveler receives a QR code on a smartphone app or on paper, which is promptly validated by the border officials who can see where they received the vaccine, who administered it to them, as well as the vaccine’s batch number, protecting the validity of each and every vaccine.”
The business asserts that 320,000 people are currently registered, and that during the COVID-19 pandemic, 1.1 million vaccination doses were verified in a test experiment. Additionally, it has established connections with the health ministries of Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Kofi Annan Award for Innovation in Africa, which bears the name of the former United Nations secretary-general and Nobel Peace Prize winner from Ghana, is intended to help accomplish the UN’s sustainable development goal of “Health and Well-Being.”
