Liberia: As Rural Healthcare Struggles, One Lofa Entrepreneur Steps Up to Bridge the Gap
By: James Papy Kwabo Jr. and Peter Kollie with Alternate Youth Radio and New Narratives| Contributing Writers
Zorzor, Lofa County –August 6, 2025- In a region where access to essential medicine can determine whether someone lives or dies, one young nurse is quietly building a health movement from the ground up. Despite the lack of support for entrepreneurs in rural areas, Henry Pewee Nyandebo is finding new ways to deliver the essential medication and healthcare that grateful residents in this rural part of the country are otherwise unable to access.
Experts say he is also showing what can be done when innovators are given a chance to find solutions. And he is showing his young peers that they can start to address problems themselves.
“Stop calling yourself ‘disadvantaged’,” is the message Nyandebo gives to other young people. “You can be poor but still make a difference. Start something. Help someone. Be the change.”
Nyandebo is a trained nurse, licensed mental health clinician, and child and adolescent mental health specialist, who was born and raised in this town. He studied at Phebe Esther Bacon School of Nursing and Midwifery, now part of Lutheran University. Following his graduation, he decided to remain in Zorzor to help his people. But soon after he started working at the Curran Lutheran Hospital in Zorzor, he realized the deep challenges facing his community.
“Sometimes, the medicine was there. Other times, we had the skills, but not the drugs,” Nyandebo said. “Patients would come, and we had to send them away to go and buy medication outside of the hospital.”
Working in the hospital gave Nyandebo an insight into the funding, infrastructure and supply chain issues that are plaguing health delivery in the country. A 2024 joint report by the IMF and Liberia’s Ministry of Health confirmed that nearly one in three Liberians still lives more than five kilometers from the nearest health facility, meaning many die before they can get help. Liberia has .37 health workers for every 1000 people according to the World Health Organization, far below the WHO’s recommended 4.5 health workers.
In remote counties like Lofa, the situation is even more severe. A 2023 Ministry of Health assessment revealed that two in every three clinics in the region routinely lack consistent medical supplies.
Rather than waiting for government solutions, Nyandebo decided to solve them himself. He first set up a private drugstore, a licensed outlet permitted to sell only over the counter (OTC) medicines and basic health supplies. Drugstores in Liberia are not authorized to dispense prescription medications or controlled substances and are typically operated by trained dispensers rather than licensed pharmacists.
Nyandebo’s small drugstore met a demand. It served up to 30 people a day. Now, as part of his expansion efforts, he is establishing a pharmacy, which is legally permitted to stock and dispense both prescription and OTC drugs under the supervision of a licensed pharmacist.
Nyandebo also realized that there were many people in remote villages who couldn’t make it to his store. So he began delivering essential medicines on his motorbike, expanding outreach to forgotten towns and villages across Zorzor and Salayea Administrative Districts in Lofa County.
“The First Time in Years We Have Peace”
In Borkeza Town, 20 minutes’ drive from Zorzor, Daniel Korboi’s family had struggled for a decade to help his younger brother. Once full of life, at age 18, his personality changed. Korboi’s brother became unpredictable; sometimes aggressive, other times silent and withdrawn; classic symptoms of the mental health disease known as schizophrenia.
“We tried everything,” Korboi said. “We took him to clinics, called traditional healers, gave medicine, but nothing lasted.” When he was finally diagnosed by a doctor, the family could not keep up with the costs of medication.
“When Henry came, he did not ask for money. He just helped him,” Korboi said. Nyandebo began providing an antipsychotic drug that he delivers once a month by injection. The family now pays a small, affordable fee. It has changed everything.
“Now my brother is stable. He can fetch water, go to the farm, and follow instructions. It is the first time in years we have had peace.”
In Zelemai, 30 minutes from Zorzor, Henry Mulbah described a neglected wound that became infected and almost cost him his leg.
“He came and treated me with no delay. Told me we’d talk about payment later. That saved me,” he said.
Nyandebo has had to self-fund his growing empire, something that has slowed him down.
“Access to loans is nearly impossible without collateral,” Nyandebo said. “Most of us starting in rural areas don’t have family land titles, guarantors, or formal business records to satisfy the banks.”
Instead, he scraped together startup funds through personal savings and a small loan of $L125,000 from a friend. He has never had access to formal government support, a microloan program, or even mentorship.
“There are no small business training centers for rural youth,” he said. “No technical grants. And when you approach institutions, they see you as too small to take seriously.”
Luther Jeke, executive director at iCampus Liberia, an entrepreneurial training organization, said young entrepreneurs in Liberia’s rural communities face far greater obstacles than their urban counterparts in Monrovia.
“There’s a real divide,” Jeke said in an interview. “Everything from the road network, the challenges of getting from one village or town to another to electricity, internet access, and clean, safe drinking water.”
Liberia lacks a cohesive national framework to link youth-driven businesses with sustainable capital and technical support, said Jeke. “There’s this issue about access to finance, especially microfinance loans and other grants for young people in business. Most of the civil society organizations, innovation hubs, donors launching youth entrepreneurship programs, even the banks, are all headquartered in Monrovia.”
This urban-centered concentration, he said, leaves thousands of promising rural youth without the tools, funding, or mentorship needed to scale their initiatives, mirroring broader national struggles to ensure equitable development.
Meanwhile, Nyandebo’s role in rural health delivery is gaining quiet recognition from within the broader system.
A senior member of the local health authority in Zorzor, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said that despite Nyandebo’s unofficial status, his contributions are deeply appreciated.
“Even though he’s not an assigned government of Liberia health worker, in the absence of sufficient resources, we value what he’s doing in the community,” said the official. “He’s helping people gain direct access to essential health services and medication in places that would otherwise be completely cut off.”
The administrator said Nyandebo’s operations are aligned with local health regulations and his principle of assisting those in need regardless of their ability to pay has earned him widespread trust and respect across economic divides.
Not everyone has welcomed his problem-solving approach. Nyandebo has faced pushback from skeptics who question how a nurse can ethically run a drugstore or pharmacy and accuse him of “bypassing protocol”.
“In Liberia, when you do good, people will still criticize. But I focus on care. That’s what matters,” Nyandebo said.
And for every critic there are many more supporters. “People no longer stand in long lines. His service is reliable,” says Johnson D. Forkpa, a youth leader in New Zorzor. “We’ve seen results where government services have failed.”
Nyandebo has urged the Ministry of Health, professional boards, and philanthropists to support youth innovators like himself not just with praise, but with practical backing: training, supplies, partnerships, and most of all, access to capital.
“With mentorship and operational support, we can reach more people. I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing this for my people and my country.”
This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the “Investigating Liberia” project. Funding was provided by the Swedish Embassy in Liberia. The funder had no say in the story’s content.
