Care Circle is a permanent, fitted-out primary healthcare clinic in Itire-Surulere, Lagos. The community donated the building, and Kwanda's funding paid to bring it up to Lagos State primary healthcare standards, equip it, stock it and staff it. It opened in October 2025 and served over 200 people in its first week.
AHA Initiative owns the clinic and the fit-out, in a building donated by the local community, and a community health committee formed locally holds it to account. The fit-out and the medical equipment are built to last about 10 years.
It costs little to keep open. There is no rent or utilities to pay on the donated premises, partner pharmacies donate medication, and a plastic waste recycling scheme run with the community brings in cash. Nurse salaries and medical supplies are currently grant funded.
Free primary healthcare, every weekday, for anyone in Itire-Surulere.
In its first ten months, to 31 July 2026, Care Circle treated 3,053 people. Consultations, treatment and medication for infections, malaria and chronic conditions, with follow-up from nurses patients see again. Mosquito nets, menstrual products and health information go out alongside treatment.
The clinic topped 300 patients for four consecutive months through to mid 2026. First-time visitors regularly make up more than half of a month's visits, which is the clearest signal available that word is still travelling through the community.
Why this asset matters here Around 60% of Nigerians are multidimensionally poor and over 40% live on less than $1.90 a day. Healthcare is the first cost a stretched household drops, and malaria alone still kills more than 200,000 people a year in a country where the cure has existed since 1932.
Itire-Surulere had no free primary care option. Care Circle is the second clinic AHA Initiative has opened with Kwanda, built on what the first one proved: put a clinic where people already are, remove the fee, and they come, then they come back.
The building came from the community, so no funding goes on rent or utilities. The one-off cost was the renovation, roughly $7,000 to $8,000 to meet Lagos State primary healthcare standards, which has already been spent.
Ongoing, the clinic runs on roughly $469 a month covering two nurses' salaries and medical stock. Partner pharmacies donate medications and supplies periodically, and a plastic waste recycling scheme run with the community contributes to running costs.
A community health committee was formed in Itire-Surulere when the clinic opened, so decisions about how it runs sit with people who use it rather than only with the organisation that built it.
Care Circle is run by the AHA Initiative, founded by Tolani Yesufu. Tolani returned to Nigeria in 2022 after studying at Harvard Medical School, Columbia Business School and Cornell University, concerned by the scale of health inequality she had watched from a distance, where people were dying of conditions that were straightforward to treat.
Her approach is to work with communities to secure disused buildings, from churches to shopfronts, and turn them into low-cost clinics staffed by local nurses and volunteer doctors. Care Circle is the second, opened after the first clinic in Oworoshoki had run for nearly a year.
