For many low-income families, accessing a basic clinic visit can mean traveling for hours, paying fees that exceed a full day’s wages, or going without care entirely. Kenya has only 1% of the recommended physician density, and private clinic visits often cost 7 times the minimum daily wage, putting essential care out of reach for households earning $2.50–$10 per day. Long travel times, inconsistent quality, limited diagnostic capacity, and overcrowded public facilities compound these challenges, leaving communities without reliable primary care.

Digital-only solutions have begun to fill part of the gap, but without accessible in-person services, they fall short especially for patients who need examinations, diagnostics, medications, and ongoing follow-up. The result is delayed treatment, higher long-term costs, and worsening health outcomes for families already living on the margins.

Founded to close the primary care gap in Kenya’s urban and peri-urban informal settlements, Access Afya has developed the Curafa™ clinic-in-a-box model, a 600 sq ft micro-clinic operated by a two-person team and supported by a centralized digital infrastructure. Each clinic provides consultations, diagnostics, pharmacy services, and virtual follow-ups at prices families can afford. Clinics achieve breakeven in eight months thanks to standardized operations, lean staffing, and high patient volumes.

To ensure consistency across locations, Access Afya trains local healthcare entrepreneurs through the Access Afya Academy, which equips franchisees with clinical, operational, and business management skills. The company’s digital tools including EMRs, virtual care, automated quality checks, and supply-chain systems, further strengthen the model’s reliability and efficiency.

Through these combined tools, Access Afya maintains:

• 99% drug availability
• 90%+ clinical checklist adherence
• 94–96% of patients reporting improvement within four days

Access Afya’s mixed network of company-owned and franchise-operated clinics has already delivered 635,000+ lifetime visits and 46,000+ virtual consultations across 23 locations in 8 counties. Access Afya is well positioned to scale to 1 million patients by 2026 and achieve breakeven by 2027.

By bringing dignified, reliable primary care directly to underserved neighborhoods and empowering local providers to run clinics sustainably, Access Afya is showing that high-quality care for low-income communities can be both impactful and commercially viable.