Maggie Chirwa

Maggie Chirwa is an experienced and versatile leader and healthcare professional. She is a State Registered Nurse and Midwife as well as a social entrepreneur with her MBA and a degree in marketing and skilled in project management in Kigali, Rwanda, with more than eighteen years of experience working in both private and public-sector organizations such as the UK National Health Service; large multinationals GlaxoSmithKline, Warner-Lambert/Parke Davis (Pfizer) and Population Services International (PSI). Chirwa developed One Family Health Rwanda’s unique 130 last mile health care outlets, 110 of which are still successfully operating, using a sustainable franchise model, leading a team of sixteen full-time and two part-time to service more than ten percent of the rural Rwandan population. During her time with PSI (Malawi), Chirwa successfully managed three social marketing projects that developed, implemented, and evaluated targeted health care social marketing programmes from design to market, and reached 2.5 million mothers with Oral Rehydration Salts for children under five, and developed and delivered an exclusive breastfeeding campaign in Mulanje District, Malawi to over 200,000 using a multimedia communications campaign. She also presented on leadership and social entrepreneurship in nursing in Rwanda at the University of Rwanda Nursing faculty. Chirwa created a primary health care delivery model in Rwanda where she leads a small team that is delivering care to millions, so, when COVID-19 hit, she had to ensure all 124 rural facilities were duly serviced and equipped to adequately respond to COVID19 in addition to maintain their day-to-day care provision services. In her leadership, Chirwa has facilitated the communication of information about the pandemic in the hardest to reach villages across Rwanda in support of the Ministry of Health Primary Health Care teams and oversaw the delivery of PPE supplies to frontline workers via motorbikes. Chirwa’s work has played a crucial role in Rwandan management of the pandemic which has maintained a gentle curve with minimum community spread, organized designated treatment and quarantine centres, and seen high compliance from the population generally with guidelines.