FARID

Some of the most difficult places in the world to provide health services are those suffering from conflict, instability and limited capacity. This is especially critical for children under 5, pregnant people and nursing mothers living in access-compromised areas where public health services are scarce or non-existent.

Traditional health solution systems may be unable to reach these inaccessible areas for various physical, economic or political reasons. In other cases, these operations may be seen as too high-risk for full implementation, leaving those most vulnerable behind in positive global health progress.

The Far-Reaching Integrated Delivery programme (FARID), supported by grant funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, brings together nontraditional Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) actors, such as Core Group and Save the Children, to reach children and other individuals in access-compromised areas. FARID leverages local, regional and global actors and builds an ecosystem to reach the targeted communities with vaccines and health and nutrition services through an innovative health camp model. 

The WFP Innovation Accelerator SDGx team convenes these partners and supports the development of unique operational design, applying the principles of human-centred design to create an innovative model that responds to the challenges of serving access-compromised areas.

FARID delivered its first health camp in 2023 and has since scaled to 21 active districts. The FARID implementing team has conducted 6,000 health camps and reached 400,000 individuals, including over 100,000 zero-dose children who received their first vaccines through FARID's intervention. This allows them to begin their routine immunization process with vaccines to protect them from polio, tuberculosis, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and other life-threatening diseases. In addition, FARID has delivered more than 150,000 nutrition consultations and 300,000 general medical consultations in 2024, supporting long-term positive health outcomes throughout the target communities.

The FARID partners plan to iterate and roll out a sustainable version of the healthcare service delivery model to standardize the model and assess different sustainability strategies to re-establish the health system in access-compromised areas with key stakeholders throughout 2025.