Ejiro Maroh, founder of Aidra Health and a Spring 2026 recipient of the Navab Social Impact Fellowship Fund, recently spoke with the Harvard Innovation Labs about his work to transform access to life-saving medical equipment for underserved healthcare facilities across Africa.
What inspired you to start your venture?
It started with a loss that shouldn't have happened. A few years ago, someone very close to me died — not because their condition was untreatable, but because the hospital didn't have the equipment needed at the critical moment.
That experience pulled me into a deeper search for answers. And as I began to dig, I realized this wasn't a one-off tragedy; it was systemic. Across Africa, too many lives are lost because hospitals lack access to the tools needed to deliver care when it matters most.
Aidra Health was born out of that moment. It's deeply personal. It's about making sure fewer families have to ask, "What if the equipment had been available?"
What impact are you hoping to achieve?
We're building toward a future where access to life-saving medical equipment is no longer a matter of luck, geography, or income — but a basic standard of care.
Today, too many hospitals across Africa are forced to operate without the tools they need. The result is devastating: tens of thousands of preventable deaths each year, delayed diagnoses, and families traveling hours — sometimes over 100 kilometers — just to access basic equipment.
In five years, we aim to enable access to critical equipment for over 10,000 underserved healthcare facilities; improve care for millions of patients with the potential to impact over six million lives even at early market penetration; reduce mortality rates by up to 50% in facilities previously without equipment access; and save providers millions in capital costs by eliminating the need for expensive upfront purchases while increasing equipment utilization to 80–90%.
But beyond the metrics, the impact we're chasing is deeply human. It's the pregnant woman who no longer has to undergo risky, makeshift procedures because an ultrasound isn't available. It's the doctor who can finally work with dignity and pride because the right equipment is there to deliver the standard of care they were trained for.
What's the hardest part about building this?
The hardest part is knowing that the problem you're solving is literally life and death — and still having to move step by step. You feel the urgency. You want to fix everything immediately. But building something sustainable, something that actually works at scale, takes time, trust, and coordination across many players.
So the hardest part is holding that tension: moving fast enough to matter, but carefully enough to build something that truly lasts.
Have you always been involved in this work or did you transition into it?
I transitioned into this work, but in many ways, it feels like everything I've done has been leading here. I originally set out to become a medical doctor, but my path eventually took me into strategy and consulting. Even then, I stayed close to health care — working with organizations in the sector and engaging through volunteer opportunities.
The real turning point, though, was that personal loss. It transformed this from something I understood intellectually into something I felt deeply responsible for. What was once an area of interest became a mission I couldn't ignore.
What's the craziest (or most unexpected) moment so far?
We were sitting with one of our pilot partners in Lagos, having what we thought would be a fairly routine conversation — trying to understand what their pool of underutilized equipment might look like. Going in, we assumed there would be some idle inventory. Maybe a few machines not in regular use.
Then they offered to show us around. As we walked through the facility, they casually opened a door and we stepped into an entire floor filled with medical equipment. Machines lined up, unused. Some had been sitting there for years.
And the craziest part? Just a few kilometers away, we had spoken to clinics that couldn't access even the most basic diagnostic tools. It was a stark reminder of two entirely different realities existing very close to each other — and how we could be the bridge.
What's been one of the coolest moments on your journey?
One of the most powerful moments was our first time witnessing our equipment being used to detect real conditions in patients who otherwise wouldn't have had access. During one of our early pilots, our partners conducted numerous screenings, and we identified conditions that would have gone unnoticed until much later — with far worse outcomes.
Seeing something that started as an idea directly impact people's lives — that's hard to beat.
What lessons have you learned that you’d like to share with other social impact founders?
One of the biggest lessons I've learned is to fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Early on, it's tempting to get attached to your idea. You want to prove it works, defend it, and push it forward. But the reality is, if you're solving a complex, real-world problem, your first solution is almost never the right one.
What matters is staying deeply obsessed with the problem itself — understanding it from every angle, listening to the people living it, and being willing to adapt your approach over and over again.
