You’re a pregnant woman living on the outskirts of Nairobi. You recognise the early signs of labour and need to get to the hospital. But your family members are at work and cannot drive you. You also don't have the means or access to public transport. What do you do?

For millions of people in the Majority World, this is a daily reality - where ambulance services are neither embedded nor coordinated into the health system, or are simply too expensive for low-income communities.

Striving to respond to this urgent gap, Caitlin Dolkart co-founded Flare Emergency Response - a subscription-based emergency-response platform, ensuring life-saving ambulance services for Kenyans. In this episode, Anubha Rawat and Caitlin discuss the Flare Emergency Response journey - from inception to launching in 2018, to now coordinating 800 ambulances and 70 aircraft, a roadside assistance program, and managing contracts in over a dozen countries in Africa, including Uganda and Tanzania.

Anubha and Caitlin also dive into finances, including how initial funding from philanthropy, venture capital and impact investors helped launch Flare Emergency Response, but why an ambulance membership model is key to long-term sustainability. They discuss the role of technology, how the team has worked to ensure coordination between existing health providers, and the innovative pricing models that make these emergency services accessible to as many as possible.

Ultimately, this powerful episode is an important reminder about how global development interventions require detailed systems-wide research for real gaps to be identified and for true impact to be created and scaled.

To learn more about Flare Emergency Response follow the link: https://flare.co.ke/

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