Ernest Darkoh

chairman, BroadReach Healthcare

Ernest Darkoh is the chairman and founding partner of BroadReach and former operations manager of Botswana's Treatment Program for HIV/AIDS. Ernest Darkoh has been at the forefront of what has been called the most important public health experiment on the African continent today, leading the charge to fight AIDS in the African nation of Botswana and building a nationwide health system from the ground up in the process. Born in the USA, Darkoh grew up in Kenya and Tanzania. There, pervasive poverty and the absence of effective government services made a deep impression on him. Encouraged by his parents, he returned to America as a young adult, first to triple-major in chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology, then to attend Harvard Medical School. He added a master's degree in public health followed by an MBA, after which he took a job at McKinsey & Co., one of America's leading management consulting firms. Darkoh signed on to set up Masa, Africa's first national antiretroviral (ARV) Program. Through BroadReach, Darkoh is already deeply involved in expanding public access to antiretroviral drugs in South Africa, the nation with the world's highest number of HIV-positive citizens. Darkoh is working to tap excess capacity in this private system to treat public patients too. That means devising a medically sound yet affordable way to manage the treatment of individuals far beyond the direct reach of these specialists. Working with private treatment partners like South African-based Aid for AIDS, and Netcare, and with financing from the USA's PEPFAR fund and the UN's Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Darkoh's team has set up a network of private physicians who are willing to take on public patients. They have also trained groups of non-expert activists who can go into remote communities to identify uninsured people who appear to be HIV-positive and need treatment. Once these individuals are identified, BroadReach then sends in frontline health-care workers to supply the missing link.