This past year was an incredible one for us here at Evidence Action.
A decade of outsized impact
2023
in review
It began a year of celebration, because 2023 marked our tenth anniversary! We crunched the numbers on our cumulative impact, taking our usual rigorous approach to estimate that we’ve reached over half a billion people, saved over 15,000 lives of children under five, and much more.
It was a year of organizational growth — our team is now nearly 800 strong, with over 90% of our staff based in our nine countries of operation across Africa and Asia. And it was a year of innovation, with our Accelerator continuing to identify evidence-based interventions, priming the truly exceptional for scale. We’ve rounded up highlights from each of our programs for you below.
<$1.50
per person
Safe Water Now
We provided access to safe water for 10 million people — and counting.
We doubled our footprint with the installation of over 24,000 new chlorine dispensers in Uganda and Malawi. In total we now have over 52,000 dispensers in Africa!
We started to ramp up in-line chlorination, our treatment intervention for piped water systems, in Malawi and Uganda, and we’re planning to test it in urban Kenya.
We ran a pilot to determine which chlorination devices work best in Indian water systems. This laid the groundwork for the Indian government to begin scaling this nationwide with our support!
Deworm the World
We’re winning the fight against worms, and creating long-term economic impact.
We aimed to deliver close to 230 million deworming treatments in 2023 (final numbers pending).
A study in Kenya showed an extraordinary reduction in parasitic worm prevalence — with the rate of soil-transmitted helminths among children dropping from 32.3% in 2012 to just 5.8% in 2022.
Research shows that deworming children has long-term impacts on their livelihoods. We’ve calculated that our deworming work over the past decade will likely produce $23 billion in productivity gains by 2042!
<$0.50
per treatment
+$0.15
per test
Syphilis-Free Start
We saved lives by helping provide syphilis screening and treatment to pregnant women.
We’ve trained nearly every health facility in Liberia that provides prenatal care services. Syphilis screening coverage is now at 70% (up from <10% in 2020), and nearly 64% of syphilis-positive pregnant women are receiving treatment.
Our work has helped prevent 1,500+ adverse birth outcomes, including over 800 lives saved.
We’re also now scaling up in Zambia and Cameroon, with plans to reach over 90% screening coverage and at least 70% treatment coverage by 2026. We’re aiming to help these governments test a combined 16.3 million pregnant women over the next decade.
Equal Vitamin Access
We helped millions of children and adolescents fight anemia with weekly supplements.
We aimed to bring iron and folic acid supplements to over 17 million children in 2023 (final numbers pending).
Looking ahead in India, we aim to avert 5 million annual anemia cases between 2023 and 2027, and 200,000 disability adjusted life years (DALYs).
We’re planning to expand this school-based program into Malawi next, alongside Deworm the World, as the target populations are the same. We’re aiming to reach 3.5 million children at scale by 2026.
$0.50
per child per year on average
We couldn’t have done any of this without the support of our generous donors.
We’re so proud to have such an engaged community behind us — that’s how we won Charity Navigator’s 2023 Community Choice Award!
While we’ve set the bar high with all of our accomplishments in 2023, we’re confident that — with your support – 2024 will lead to even greater impact!
Cheers to all that we’ll accomplish together next year,
Kanika Bahl
CEO