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Alice Kang’ethe: The economist fighting for a healthier Africa
Alice Kang’ethe is the CEO of the Beginnings Fund, a coalition that includes the Gates Foundation, the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, the Elma Foundation, the Mohamed Bin Zayed Foundation For Humanity and Delta Philanthropies.
Early in Alice Kang'ethe's public-health career, on a trip to Mbita, a scorpion stung her. The pain was ferocious. She was far from a proper hospital, and her international health insurance was useless there. The immediate help at her disposal was a modest clinic, where health workers gave her an antidote and got her the care she needed.
"Those people saved my life," Alice says. It is, in a way, the whole argument she has built a career on: Fix the small clinic, and the rest of the country survives with it. Ignore it, and geography decides who lives.
