Reducing preventable maternal and child deaths by ensuring care reaches families early, continuously and in time.
In Malawi, maternal and newborn mortality remain high despite progress over recent decades. The maternal mortality ratio is approximately 381 deaths per 100,000 live births, well above the global target of 70. Under-five mortality also remains elevated, with 38 deaths per 1,000 live births, many occurring in the neonatal period when timely, skilled care is most critical.
These outcomes reflect a persistent gap in how the health system reaches people. For many rural families, care is often too far, too costly or accessed too late. Distance to health facilities, transport barriers, delayed awareness and weak referral systems mean that women and children are frequently reached only after complications have begun.
Wandikweza addresses this last-mile gap by redesigning how care is delivered, shifting preventive, routine and follow-up care from facilities to households and connecting families to timely care across all levels of the health system.
We advance six United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:
Our Vision
A Malawi where no woman or newborn dies from a preventable complication.
Our Mission
Building a health system that reaches people early at the household level and connects them to care in time.
Our Goal
To reach 3 million people by 2030 through Proactive Doorstep Care across seven districts in Malawi, ensuring each person is reached early and connected to timely care across all levels of the health system.
Our Model
Proactive Doorstep Care (PDC), a scalable, government-aligned model reducing preventable maternal and child deaths by shifting care from facilities to households.
The model is designed to decongest facilities by shifting preventive, routine and follow-up care into communities, while reserving the health centre for more complex, referred or specialized cases.
Wandikweza’s Proactive Doorstep Care (PDC) model redesigns how care reaches families in Malawi’s hardest-to-reach communities.
It prioritizes households often missed by facility-centered systems, ensuring they are reached early, supported continuously and connected to timely care.
Through PDC, mothers, newborns, young children and adolescents receive proactive, coordinated care before pregnancy, during pregnancy and through a child’s fifth birthday, reducing delays and preventing complications before they escalate.
PDC Model Breaks
CIRCLE OF VULNERABILITY
Isolation
Limited Access Delayed Care Emergencies
High Costs Instability
DOORSTEP CARE
CIRCLE OF RESILIENCE
Prevention
Healthy Outcomes Savings
Stability
Stronger Communities
Where we work
Wandikweza works in rural Malawi, where many communities live far from health facilities and face persistent barriers to timely care. For many families, distance, transport challenges and the cost of seeking care mean services are often accessed lat, sometimes only when complications have already begun.
These barriers are reinforced by gaps within the health system, including limited staffing, constrained service availability and weak referral and emergency response pathways. In this context, delays in accessing care can quickly turn manageable conditions into life-threatening emergencies.
