At Save the Slum Initiative (STSI), health is understood as far more than the absence of disease. It is dignity, opportunity, and hope for people living in Nigeria’s most underserved communities. STSI works on the frontlines of slums, hard-to-reach settlements, and conflict-affected areas, delivering lifesaving health services to families who are too often excluded from formal health systems. Rather than waiting for people to reach hospitals or clinics, the organization takes health services directly into communities—listening to lived realities, challenging harmful norms, and responding to urgent needs where they exist. Through this approach, STSI is breaking cycles of illness, reducing preventable deaths, and empowering communities to claim their fundamental right to health.

STSI’s health programming spans the full continuum from prevention to survival, addressing some of the most pressing and avoidable causes of illness and death. A core focus is the prevention of cervical cancer through HPV vaccination, ensuring that girls living in slum communities are not left behind from one of the world’s most effective cancer prevention tools. Through community dialogues, school engagement, radio outreach, and the active involvement of mothers, STSI confronts fear, misinformation, and cultural barriers that limit vaccine uptake. By working with trusted voices such as religious leaders, teachers, women’s groups, and youth advocates, the organization builds confidence and demand, ensuring that families are informed and prepared when vaccination campaigns reach their communities.

The organization also prioritizes immunization for children who have never received a single vaccine, often referred to as zero-dose children. These children frequently live in communities affected by poverty, displacement, and mistrust of health systems. In close collaboration with local health authorities, STSI conducts house-to-house outreach, community mobilization, and health facility support to identify and immunize children who were previously missed, offering them protection and a healthier future.

Ending harmful practices that endanger the health and rights of girls is another critical pillar of STSI’s work. The organization leads community-driven efforts to eliminate Female Genital Mutilation in Kaduna, Adamawa, and Borno States by engaging families, traditional and religious leaders, and women’s groups to challenge harmful beliefs and promote safer alternatives. At the same time, STSI strengthens protection systems by training healthcare workers and law enforcement agencies to uphold the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act, 2019. Survivors receive psychosocial support, medical referrals, and safe spaces to heal, while their voices are amplified in advocacy and policy discussions.

In densely populated slum communities where poor housing and stagnant water increase disease risk, STSI addresses malaria through prevention, early detection, and treatment. The organization distributes insecticide-treated mosquito nets, conducts community screenings, and provides timely treatment in high-burden areas, prioritizing locations where malaria poses the greatest threat to children’s lives. Each intervention helps preserve health, protect families, and reduce preventable child deaths.

STSI also delivers HIV prevention, testing, and care services in ways that confront stigma and fear. By bringing confidential testing, peer counseling, and treatment referrals directly into communities, the organization creates safe and supportive environments where individuals can seek care without discrimination. These services are paired with efforts to address the underlying social drivers of HIV, including poverty, gender inequality, overcrowding, and limited access to information. Similarly, STSI conducts active tuberculosis case-finding in partnership with the Damien Foundation and state health authorities, identifying cases early through door-to-door outreach and community-based health workers, supporting treatment adherence, and preventing further transmission in high-risk settings.

Sexual and reproductive health services are integrated across STSI’s health programming, recognizing their central role in the wellbeing of women, girls, families, and communities. From menstrual health support and family planning to safe pregnancy care and services for survivors of gender-based violence, STSI provides respectful, confidential, and empowering care. By supporting women and girls to manage their reproductive health, the organization helps keep girls in school, strengthens economic stability, and advances gender equality.

In slum communities, health is not a luxury but a matter of survival, yet the people who need care most often face the greatest barriers, including distance, cost, misinformation, fear, and exclusion. STSI responds by going directly to communities, engaging mothers in their homes, communicating in local languages, and working alongside trusted community champions. From urban informal settlements to conflict-affected areas in northern Nigeria, the organization demonstrates that meaningful health transformation is possible even in the most challenging environments.

Through community-led campaigns that engage mothers, schools, and local leaders, STSI has reached more than one million people across over thirteen states in Nigeria. Zero-dose children have been identified and vaccinated, cases of FGM have been prevented through sustained community action, and grassroots health workers continue to extend care deep into communities that were previously unreachable. At the heart of this work is a simple belief: access to health should never be determined by where someone lives. Through partnership, advocacy, and collective action, Save the Slum Initiative continues to transform health and change lives, building a future where every woman, child, and family can live with dignity and hope.