LIONESS WEEKENDER COVER STORY

East Africa Hafeshawi Medical Centre, a high-impact business providing affordable healthcare to refugees in Uganda

Helen Habteslasie Keleta is the Founder and CEO of East Africa Hafeshawi Medical Center, a well-established health centre that was started in January 2018 in a convenient and highly accessible location in Kampala, Uganda. She is a mother of four, and an Eritrean Refugee living in Kampala since 2016. By profession she is an engineer and up until 2016 has been working with different family construction companies. After she came to Uganda she started living among the refugees in Kampala and noticed there is a language barrier amongst them and Ugandans. Especially when it came to health, this language barrier made it worse because 'right patient-right information-right care-at the right time' works well in life. This idea triggered Helen to invest in the medical care industry by getting different native professional doctors and nurses.

Helen established her business, East Africa Hafeshawi Medical Center in 2018 in a highly accessible area of Kampala, with a 5 bed capacity medical centre and expanded up to 25 bed capacity and opened two branches in different areas in order to reach all the refugees to reduce transport costs. At this time the company was exposed to international laboratory systems. Helen is good at interacting with different communities and loves to do what is asked of her to under her capital limit. Helen's and her company vision is: To be the healthcare ‘’Provider of Choice’’ in terms of giving safe, quality, affordable high level health service and health awareness in East Africa. The company's mission is to continually put the ‘’care’’ and to provide respect, comprehensive, trusted, compassionate and integrated healthcare services that exceeds costumer’s expectations. Today, the business employs 40 people.

Lioness Weekender spoke to founder Helen Keleta to learn more about her very unique entrepreneurial journey, her mission to make a positive difference to the lives of those in need of good, affordable healthcare, and her vision for the future.

What does your company do?

My company is a Medical Centre which has a main branch and two other branches in different parts of Kampala in Uganda.

What inspired you to start your company?

I am a refugee living in Kampala since 2016. During this time I noticed that my fellow refugee mothers were having troublesome times seeking medical care, and all this was as a result of a language barrier but also financial constraints. On many occasions, these mothers, either pregnant or with their children requested me to escort them to local medical clinics as a translator while they sought medical care. Those scenarios triggered me to think of how best I would invest in medical service delivery to lessen this growing burden which not only affects us as refugees but also the bigger local community.

A major problem of the refugee society is the language barrier. And when it comes to health it makes it worse. Even though the professionals can obtain the result of your sickness through different investigations, patients can face paying a lot of money, experience difficulties of getting the right treatment, follow-up and not taking the right prescriptions. Even after going home, there is the difficulty of asking questions on the phone and making patients travel all the way back to hospital. Most of the refugees have a shortage of money, so when someone feels sick, starting from the transportation cost, consultation fee, investigation fee and medication fee, costs a lot of money. And lacking communication is another wastage. In addition to that missing health information from the government, there are many refugees who are professional doctors and nurses who are lacking job opportunities and there is a difficulty finding them since they don’t have specific workplaces and laboratories for investigations.

After finding out what was the main problem, East Africa Hafeshawi Medical Center was established in a convenient and highly accessible location in Kampala. We hired doctors and nurses who are Eritreans and Ugandans and Somalians and this has opened much-needed job opportunities. Our business delivers essential information from government health centers and gives them a space to use it freely for services such as vaccination and health awareness. The East Africa Hafeshawi Medical Center provides different types of health education and awareness through social media and through different religious centers. The company provides marketing department to reach the refugees who do not have smart phones by distributing fliers at places which they can be found.

We lead the society to interact with Ugandans through blood donation and some other activities like environmental hygiene. The company has also expanded and opened different departments and increased the number of beds in order to avoid multiple referrals to hospitals. We have opened two branches to minimize transport costs and reach more clients and solve their problems. Exposure to international laboratory systems in order to get highly qualified professionals and meet the right standard, increases the trust and revenue of the company. This will help the company get more money and expand more.

Why should anyone use your service or product?

Friendly costs - unlike our competitors, our charges are very low because we manage communities which are constrained financially. We minimize their transport costs and time since we have branches at the places which there are no hospitals. We only refer critical patients. We provide all basic services at fair and affordable prices.

Outreach Programs - We also attract clients to ourselves through outreach programs and free medical checks. This gives us an advantage. We give them free health education and awareness. We transfer the right information through their native languages which they can easily understand, communicate, and ask questions as well.

Our customer needs understanding and trust. Hiring native doctors can easily solve the problem, create understanding and wellbeing as the patients' needs to have mind relieve. We engage our employers to follow up with the client every three days from the day of visit by asking on the phone how they are feeling and healing.

Tell us a little about your team

Our company is a health center which is a B2C model. We hire professional doctors, nurses, cashier, accountant medical and company supervisors, medical director and cleaners. Our teams are Ugandans, Eritreans, and Somalian. The company has different departments with different groups of teams, but they are all integrated. We have a lovely strong team, encouraging, cooperating, skillful, trustful, and visionary. Most of them are professionals within their specific field.

Main challenges with our business and team:

Sudden health change of patients from normal to critical
Shortage of medical instruments and drugs of their preferences
Time keeping management of shifting staff (transport problem)
Lack of technology and computer systems
Being a different native

Our company overcomes these by:

Partnering with hospitals and other diagnostic centers.
Delegate staff according to their talent and implementation, receive input from leaders of each department to find solutions to challenges.
Encourage them to see the problems, decide and get new ideas under approval of medical director.
Best practices of effective teamwork to help avoid some dangers and successfully approach the task, show love and care to our patients and their families which can immediately and positively affect patient safety and outcomes.
We give basic computer courses and our integrated hospital vain system courses which helps any one to communicate through network systems by being fast and avoid wasting time.

Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And do you come from an entrepreneurial background?

I have never been an entrepreneur before 2018 (before this company). But I have been working as an engineer with different companies and I have worked as a construction manager with my family business for around four years. After I came to Kampala in Uganda, the experience of working at the family business encouraged me to be an entrepreneur easily.

What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?

Expand/open more branches by improving the capital
Expand the pharmacy.
Work with Insurance companies to attract regular clients.
More medical services like imaging (x-ray, MRI and CT scans), ambulance
services and home care services.
Follow the ISO Standards and management system.
Improve to a hospital level.
Open nursing school with the cooperation of some universities.

What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?

Ensuring consistency, continual improvement, environment management and patient satisfaction.
Improving diversity.
Boosting the company name by encouraging the marketing team.
Improving employment capacity, education, and mentorship of different professions for fast and quality customer care.
Interaction with different communities with different activities like giving free services and sponsoring young communities like artists and football teams for environmental hygiene and marketing.

What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?

I like to say that there is nothing hard in this world, just start the business with any amount of capital and whatever happens never stop, fight for your dreams, and leave your mind thinking.

Always depend on others and always learn from your own failure and victories. Never stop enjoying whatever happens in life.

To find out more, send an email to Helen Keleta: helenkeleta45@gmail.com or visit the company’s website and social media platforms:

Website: http://eastafricamedicalcenter.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EastAfricaMedicalKla?mibextid=ZbWKwL

Twitter: https://twitter.com/EastAfricaMedic

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eastafricamedicalcenter/

YouTube or Vimeo Video: https://youtube.com/@EastAfricaMedicalCenter
https://www.linkedin.com/in/east-africa-medical-center-69bb79265
https://www.tiktok.com/@eastafricamedicalcenter