After returning to his home country of Liberia and witnessing people die from diseases easily treatable with modern medicine, one Harvard Medical School instructor has made it his mission to treat 30 million people across the globe by 2030, according to The Washington Post.
Rajesh Panjabi, MD, said the most troubling aspect of his return to Liberia was learning there were only 50 practicing physicians in a country of nearly 4 million people, and people living in remote areas had almost no access to them, according to the report.
To aid those in his home country as well as those living in underserved populations across the globe, Dr. Panjabi founded The Last Mile Health, a nonprofit that trains community health workers to administer simple health procedures in areas where treatment is difficult to obtain. His efforts earned him a spot in Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World" in 2016, with an essay written by former President Bill Clinton.
Recently, Dr. Panjabi received a $1 million prize from the international TED conference to aid him in his ultimate goal: to save 30 million lives by 2030.
Dr. Panjabi told The Washington Post he plans to use the money to create the Community Health Academy, a global entity that will train and equip healthcare workers with life-saving skills. The organization would provide each worker with a backpack equipped with "tools and medicine to employ 30 different life-saving services."
"This isn't just a story in Liberia, it's the story in rural South Dakota, in Appalachia; it's the story of folks in rural Alaska, and it's the story of various rural people throughout the world. So, if there are a billion people on the planet who live in these remote communities, how do we solve that issue?" said Dr. Panjabi. "The idea is that help for these communities might not come from places we expect. It may not come from the outside — it may actually come from within. My dream is that this academy will contribute to the training of hundreds of thousands of community members to help bring health care to their neighbors."