Mpilo Mobile provides primary healthcare services in urban, semi-urban and rural areas across South Africa, by using mobile pop up clinics to service these communities.

Mpilo Mobile was founded in 2016 by Tumi Mabitsela*, a dynamic social entrepreneur who identified a gap in the market through her own experience and stepped up to address this with an innovative solution.

The company’s business model is very unique, as it does not require a brick and mortar clinic or expensive medical equipment. The primary resources needed are a medical team, a tent, a medical pack, and essential medications. This allows the business to employ a ‘plug and play’ business model to provide flexible and cost-effective medical interventions to communities that, traditionally, had limited access to primary healthcare.

Mpilo also works in partnership with the Department of Health, employing a B2B business model that is funded through strategic private sector partnerships. One such partner is Dettol, which has partnered with Mpilo on a Hand Hygiene Behavior Change Programme aimed at reducing diarrhea and diarrhea-related illnesses.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the focus of Mpilo Mobile and culminated in a close partnership with the Department of Health to assist in preventing and containing the spread of the virus. Mpilo Mobile now sees itself in the frontline against the war on COVID-19 by providing hygiene education and handwashing stations at critical hotspots in Gauteng.

*Tumi Mabitsela was a 2015 Nelson Mandela Washington Fellow and a leading voice at the 10th Sankalp Global summit in 2018. She also represents one of 11 social entrepreneurs for the GE World Health Mother and Child program.