Public Health & Telehealth

What this sector
is up against.

WHO estimates a global deficit of 10 million health workers by 2030, with the burden falling disproportionately on rural South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Mental health infrastructure is nearly absent in most of South Asia, with fewer than 1 psychiatrist per 200,000 people in Pakistan and Bangladesh — stigma compounds the access problem.

Digital health tools proliferated chaotically during COVID, creating fragmented, non-interoperable systems that can't generate the population-level data needed for public health decision-making.

Maternal and neonatal mortality remains unacceptably high in rural South Asia, linked directly to the absence of skilled birth attendants and functional referral pathways.

Pakistan and Bangladesh have large, trained community health worker networks that are underutilized as digital health access points — a deployment problem, not a workforce problem.

Urdu, Bengali, and Sinhala-language health content is dramatically underproduced; voice-based health information in local languages has demonstrated high uptake where tested.

Telemedicine regulation in Pakistan and Bangladesh has been formalized post-COVID, creating a clearer legal pathway for licensed teleconsultation platforms.

Non-communicable disease burden is rising rapidly in South Asian urban populations, and chronic disease management is one of the clearest use cases for remote monitoring tools.

Global health research, health system strengthening, and infectious disease preparedness with significant South Asia investment

Maternal health, infectious disease, and health system capacity in South and Southeast Asia

Community health, primary care, and rural health infrastructure across South and Central Asia

Early-stage global health innovations from low- and middle-income countries; Stars in Global Health grants

Poverty, health equity, and medical research with emphasis on structural determinants of health