Akwaaba is a Claude assistant on WhatsApp that speaks Ewe, Twi and English, and takes on the paperwork that eats a health worker's week. We start in Ghana.
Africa CDC and African Union, February 2026 · cost estimate from Akwaaba's test token counts at Claude Sonnet 5.5 list prices
Ghana's village clinics. Ghana runs about 6,500 small community clinics, known locally as CHPS compounds (Community-based Health Planning and Services). Each is usually run by one nurse, a Community Health Officer, with a few volunteers. They cover nearly half the country. Akwaaba starts with about 25 of these nurses in one district of the Volta Region, then grows region by region and country by country.
Every visit becomes a line in a paper register; every register becomes a monthly report to the district. A 2021 study of primary care in Ghana and four other countries found that recording took about a third of consultation time.
a team with the International Rescue Committee asked Claude to turn clinic registers into digital dashboards.Anthropic, 2026 Public Benefit Report, p. 2. Akwaaba does the same at the point of care, on a nurse's own phone.
No app to install. Volunteers, nurses and supervisors each get the tools for their own job, joined by a team code. Every tool carries little clinical risk and produces a number we can publish in weeks.
Akwaaba reads the counts, flags gaps and odd jumps, and drafts the summary. The nurse checks and submits; it never submits anything.
Built · names hidden firstChildren, pregnancies and new mothers added by register number, never by name. Akwaaba tracks each vaccine, antenatal and postnatal visit due and sends the week's list, with reminders to forward to families in Twi or Ewe.
BuiltBed nets, handwashing or antenatal care, in Ewe or Twi, ready to play at a durbar or a weighing day, with a PDF and a group quiz.
BuiltVolunteers record home visits by voice. A danger sign sends the emergency card and a one-tap referral; the nurse confirms arrival, and the volunteer is asked again after 48 hours. Supervisors see every compound's numbers each Monday.
BuiltSigns of measles, cholera, polio-like paralysis or a cluster of illness become a draft alert for the District Disease Control Officer, and the team lead is told at once.
BuiltType what's on the shelf. Akwaaba flags stock-outs and anything below the district minimum, and drafts the request before the clinic runs out.
BuiltBefore a register photo leaves our server, every name and phone number is blacked out. Claude reads only the counts, and code adds the pages up and flags what doesn't add up. If names can't be hidden, the photo is refused.
Test runs with sample content, not pilot users
A Python service on Meta's WhatsApp Cloud API. Claude Sonnet 5.5 writes the answers; speech, maps and memory sit beside the main path, never in front of the emergency card.
The emergency card is plain code. It goes out before the model is called, so it never depends on the model getting it right.
# the safety fast path, in plain code (safety.py) convuls · seizure · not breathing · heavy bleeding · snake bite pregnant + bleeding · headache + blurred vision · newborn + fever if looks_like_emergency(text): send(EMERGENCY_CARD) # before Claude is called reply = claude.messages.stream(model="claude-sonnet-5-5", system=prompt, ...)
Never give prescription medicine doses. For medicines, point to the facility, national treatment guidelines or the supervising nurse. For fever, encourage a malaria test (RDT) rather than guessing. When unsure how urgent something is, choose the more urgent option.
Language. Everyday spoken Ewe or Twi; keep English terms like ORS or RDT where no everyday word exists; never invent words or proverbs.
Format. About 100 words, a bold title, no tables or links, no closing question: the buttons do that.
| Health talks with voice | Built | Native-speaker review; voice tried on the live number |
| Register photo to monthly return | Built | Names hidden before the model, counts added and checked in code, PDF draft. Needs the district's real form and register layout |
| Emergency card | Built | Catches 44 of 44 urgent test cases, 0 false alarms in 20 routine ones. Clinician review, Twi and Ewe phrasings |
| Follow-ups and Monday list | Built | District confirms the schedules; an approved WhatsApp template for the Monday list |
| Teams, visits and referrals | Built | Volunteers join with their nurse's code; referral arrival tracked |
| Disease alerts | Built | District confirms Ghana's 2022 IDSR list and who receives alerts |
| Stock check | Built | The district's minimum and maximum stock levels |
| Danger-sign checklist | Off in pilot | Returns only after a silent trial graded by clinicians |
| Nearest facility | Built | Check how many village clinics in the district are mapped |
| Ewe menus | Built | Every menu and button in Ewe. Native-speaker review before Volta |
| Cloud hosting | Ready | Container with a persistent disk, health checks, Fly.io and Render configs |
| Accounts | To do | Registered non-profit, Meta business verification, own WhatsApp number |
The 2026 Public Benefit Report sets a standard to "make powerful AI affordable and usable in every language and format", and is candid about where it falls short.
AI use is heavily concentrated in wealthier countries and among higher-income, white-collar workers.p. 16
Akwaaba reaches rural health staff on WhatsApp and prepaid data, by voice.
working to ensure that Claude models perform well in languages that are underrepresented in their training data.p. 16
Akwaaba publishes a clinician-graded Twi and Ewe health evaluation.
we have not been active enough in collecting data to measure the results.p. 16
Akwaaba defines six outcome measures before launch and reports them, good or bad.
Model cost isn't the constraint: a year of Claude for 10,000 health workers is at most about $300k. Trust is. So we launch with features that hold no patient data, publish results every month, and earn each next step in public.
Gate: daily use, zero safety misses
Gate: return time cut, referrals tracked
Gate: 60% weekly active
Gate: outcomes hold at scale
Licences cover running costs
Based in Bellevue, WA. Extensive product and engineering experience, having developed many products at Microsoft. Built the prototype; owns the product, safety engineering and evaluation.
Holds every in-person relationship: district health teams, recruiting and training nurses and volunteers, field visits and support.
For a live demo on WhatsApp, a partnership, or the plan in full.