Solution Signals

Three memos. One lever each.

Each brief isolates the bottleneck, names the buyer and channel, lays out first moves, and keeps the estimate risk visible.

As of 2026-06-25 last 24 hours 3 memos

Epidemic Control · Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda

🧪 Ebola is beating the sample courier

Bundibugyo Ebola is spreading where symptoms can look ordinary and trust is already thin. The missed lever is not only money or messaging; it is the lost day between a fever at home, a lab sample, safe isolation, and family support.

Bottleneck

Contact tracing in insecure districts is losing time because sample pickup, isolation transport, food support, and caregiver pay are handled as separate chores instead of one doorstep service.

Intervention

Pay local teams for verified same-day sample pickup and 48-hour safe isolation, bundling transport, food, phone credit, and caregiver cover into one household transaction.

Payoff range

USD 300 million to USD 1.5 billion

Doorstep Isolation Freight

DRC and Uganda health ministries authorize district Ebola cells; Africa CDC, WHO, and emergency donors pay through milestone contracts; community health workers, motorcycle couriers, labs, and trusted local groups reach listed contacts.

It treats early isolation as a delivery service with household costs prepaid, not as a clinic instruction that poor or frightened families must finance themselves.

First moves

  1. Map the top 50 transmission clusters and assign each to a courier, lab, and isolation bed within a single dispatch sheet.
  2. Issue mobile money packages for food, phone credit, and caregiver cover when a listed contact accepts testing or isolation.
  3. Publish a daily district score for pickup time, sample result time, and isolation acceptance, with no names attached.

Signals

  • Africa CDC raised the response requirement to about USD 1.4 billion while reported disbursement still lagged far behind pledges.Reuters (2026-06-25)
  • DRC reported 1,118 confirmed cases and 291 deaths, with Uganda also reporting cases across the border.Reuters (2026-06-25)
  • European disease monitors updated the count and warned that isolation beds and new deaths were still rising.ECDC (2026-06-25)

Estimate lens

Cost
USD 45 million to USD 120 million
Benefit
USD 300 million to USD 1.5 billion
BCR
3:1 to 15:1
Confidence
Medium

Risk: Conflict access and undercounted cases could make paid doorstep reach weaker than planned.

Bottleneck first

The memo starts where the system is stuck: transport, access, payment, enforcement, maintenance, or trust.

Actor clear

Each intervention says who pays, who delivers, and who is supposed to benefit.

Risk visible

The payoff range is useful only when the failure mode is easy to see.