Habiba Banu

Karma: 1,371

Habiba Banu 29 Aug 2026 12:33 UTC
2 points
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on: Spiro: an update 2.5 years on and a fundraising ask for expansion
Update 29 Aug 2026: We met our $512k fundraising goal mentioned in this post! Huge thanks to everyone who made that happen. We’ve moving ahead with engaging implementation partners for 6 months and are planning training in September and a phased roll out from October 26 - Jan 27. Our updated fundraising two-pager is here: https://tinyurl.com/spiro-proposal this covers extending the Sindh expansion work from 6 to 12 months as well as other staff and program costs for 2027. If you are interested in supporting Spiro we’re still interested in hearing from you!

Habiba Banu 28 Jul 2026 11:56 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Verónica Suárez M.’s comment on: Spiro: an update 2.5 years on and a fundraising ask for expansion
Thanks Verónica!

Co-founders moving on is an interesting topic that I’ve changed my mind on a bit over time.

Looking at AIM-incubated organisations there were a few initially that kept the same two co-founders for a long while. But more recently there has been more diversity of routes:
1. Organisations doing really well with only one founder from the start
2. A bunch where where one founder left around the 2 year mark and it seems like the right decision for the org. (By then you’ve built something that exists a bit beyond the two of you and having one organisational leader building an exec team around them could make more sense. )
I think that generally has pushed me (and I think others at AIM) to think that two co-founders staying for the long haul isn’t always the ideal to strive for. As I understand it, AIM’s messaging in the incubation program at the moment has shifted a bit to accommodate that.

Some other things to note:
- There can certainly be cases where a co-founder leaves because of conflict, or especially early on, or it might not have been ideal timing for the organisation
- There have been organisations initially in category 1 and 2 that then did bring a second person into the exec team who is co-executive again, and
- I think more traditional wisdom in other sectors can often be that they’d love to see founders really be driven by their commitment to this project and stick it out for a long time.
I think that didn’t directly answer your question but hope that helped!

Habiba Banu 20 Jul 2026 13:06 UTC
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in reply to: Tony Senanayake’s comment on: Spiro: an update 2.5 years on and a fundraising ask for expansion
Thank you Tony! These are really interesting and tough questions.

We certainly see a potential route for government as a doer and payer at scale. Re payer: we’ve seen examples in Pakistan where he government outsource service provision in both education and health to NGOs - so NGOs deliver but government pays. Re doer: when there is a strong community based health worker force it’s more possible to layer TB into what they do. There are some alternatives to consider e.g. Commcare Connect https://labs.connect.dimagi.com/ to essentially allow government staff to pick this up as gig work. But we haven’t looked into these a tonne yet. I think the routes here are most promising in Punjab province and potentially other countries.

However, with the advent of the third wave of philanthropy the time pressure to handover to government as the payer at scale I think has lessened. I’m interested in your take on this too. It does seem possible to me that providing this intervention support directly in Sindh and elsewhere funded by philanthropy could be a more viable route than it has previously been. Right now I think that actually means viability of different funding sources is probably my biggest uncertainty to shed light on the best scaling strategy.

Habiba Banu 20 Jul 2026 12:52 UTC
8 points
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in reply to: John Salter’s comment on: Spiro: an update 2.5 years on and a fundraising ask for expansion
Great questions! And thank you for the kind words.

I should also say going from incubated to getting GiveWell money is in large part a function of GiveWell being excited in 2024/early 2025 to make grants to earlier stage charities and us picking an idea that they independently looked into and approved a grant to CHAI about!

The Drug Itself
1. What is it called?
A combination of two drugs: Isoniazid plus Rifapentine. The combination is called 3HP.
1. How much does it cost?
$10 for the standard version of 3HP—both drugs are combined together into one tablet.

$7 for the brand-new child-friendly version

But note Spiro doesn’t buy the drugs—the government gets them usually with money from the Global Fund
1. Roughly how does it work?
For people who have been infected with TB, these are antibiotics that fight the TB bacteria before it develops into TB disease. (Roughly Isoniazid blocks the bacteria from building their cell wall, Rifapentine blocks them from replicating)
1. What’s the side-effect profile like?
Generally extremely well-tolerated especially in kids. Occasional reactions can be rash or vomiting.

Growth
1. How’d you get the government so excited so quickly as total outsiders? (asking for a friend)
Haha I don’t think it was quick! Each stage has been very incremental. Some amount of being at the right place right time I think. [Can say more by DM]
1. How much do you reckon you’ll benefit from economies of scale?
Hopefully it should help! But I haven’t done any good modelling of this yet.
1. Are funding and target population size is the only real constraints that you see at present?
I think my personal capacity is a constraint right now as all Spiro things still go through me so I need to build that out.

Outside the box
1. At least in rural areas, where getting there is the majormost cost, why not do other things beyond TB screening / prevention too e.g. delivering under-supplied medicines / vitamins / goods (assuming you / your partners aren’t already doing that)
This is an excellent question and I think usually expanding to other verticals when you’ve solve a “last-mile problem” is a really good idea. We haven’t yet explored this seriously for our TB program—one of the awkward things is that we’re only going to houses where someone has TB not going to all doors in the area which would be an odd strategy for something like vitamins / immunisation. We are more hoping to go the other direction—layer our TB program onto other health workers who are already going door to door. That’s our plan for Punjab. But in the meantime we’re focusing on expanding our program in Sindh and showing it works at scale.

Spiro: an update 2.5 years on and a fundraising ask for expansion

Habiba Banu15 Jul 2026 11:00 UTC

134 points

10 comments6 min readEA link

Habiba Banu 14 Jan 2024 15:20 UTC
4 points
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on: [Podcast + Transcript] AMA: Founder and CEO of AMF, Rob Mather
Thanks so much for doing this and for sharing! I found his comments on the portofolio of the Global Fund’s malaria work to be particularly interesting :)

Habiba Banu 14 Dec 2023 16:10 UTC
12 points
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on: AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
What, if anything, would you do differently if you were starting AMF today?

Habiba Banu 14 Dec 2023 16:08 UTC
6 points
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on: AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
Now you have a bigger team have you found that comes with much more overhead in people management, internal communications etc?

Habiba Banu 14 Dec 2023 16:06 UTC
3 points
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on: AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
On what frequency do you think about organisational goals and strategy internally? (If you’re happy to share) E.g. do you set quarterly goals, think about big picture strategy annually etc

Habiba Banu 14 Dec 2023 15:59 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Habiba Banu’s comment on: AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
Relatedly / alternatively: In the course of running AMF have you ever struggled with worries about whether you’re on the right track or doubted your choices? How have you handled this?

Habiba Banu 14 Dec 2023 15:55 UTC
2 points
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on: AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
AMF has leveraged corporate support and partnerships perhaps more than other charities do. Does that seem true to you? If so, is it something you think lean nonprofits should be doing more?

Habiba Banu 14 Dec 2023 15:54 UTC
7 points
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on: AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
Top advice to new charity entrepreneurs?

Habiba Banu 14 Dec 2023 15:53 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Habiba Banu’s comment on: AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
Relatedly:

Do you think the Effective Altruism community could/should be doing more to start new projects vs funding / staffing existing projects?

Habiba Banu 14 Dec 2023 15:51 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Habiba Banu’s comment on: AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
Relatedly/alternatively:

What do you think of interventions that save lives in a less direct and/or less measurable way? E.g. funding research into vaccine development, strengthening health systems, policy advocacy etc?

Habiba Banu 14 Dec 2023 15:49 UTC
2 points
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on: AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
Did you get pushback from people in the early days who questioned the usefulness of the role AMF you could play or your model of delivery? How did you handle such pushback?

Habiba Banu 14 Dec 2023 15:46 UTC
7 points
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on: AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
In what situations does it seem like a good idea to start a new (initially small) charity rather than supporting existing efforts?

(E.g. looking at the outside at Malaria work in 2005 one might have felt like this was a huge area with a lot of attention from big global health organisations and it would be surprising if a new small organisation could be able to bring something different / useful that existing organisations couldn’t)

Bit of context—I’ve just started a TB charity and am curious about this for TB too!

Habiba Banu 14 Dec 2023 15:39 UTC
2 points
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on: AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
What’s your opinion of the other kinds of work that the Global Fund funds for malaria prevention?

(E.g. At one extreme: GF funds a sensible portfolio of activities and if you were going to spend multiple billions you couldn’t do that much better. At the other extreme: The majority of malaria work could stand to be a lot more effective than it currently is—maybe even nets would be a much bigger part of the portfolio)

Habiba Banu 14 Dec 2023 15:27 UTC
6 points
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on: AMA: Founder and CEO of the Against Malaria Foundation, Rob Mather
The global health community seems to view verticalisation / silo’d provision of health services as non-ideal. (E.g. one ecosystem set up for HIV work another separate ecosystem for Malaria, another one for maternal health etc. But if you’re ill you want to go to a primary care facility and get whatever it is you need.) Do you have any concerns about AMF’s work being silo’d from other health work in this way?

Habiba Banu 11 Dec 2023 15:56 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Siebe’s comment on: Spiro—New TB charity raising seed funds
Yes I asked some TB experts about precisely this a little while ago and I totally agree with your take: eventually there will hopefully be even better preventative measures like vaccines but they really do seem like a while off right now. So right now the WHO is keen to push on expanding access to TB preventative treatment.

Habiba Banu 28 Nov 2023 19:28 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: Andrew Gimber’s comment on: Spiro—New TB charity raising seed funds
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your comment!
It wasn’t clear to me from the post whether you’re planning to do an impact evaluation of an existing government TB programme, or to trial a new kind of screening and preventive treatment programme in partnership with a government (which wouldn’t otherwise do it without you).
Apologies it wasn’t clear!
Our current plan is the latter: to start a new program (in partnership with the government).
Programs like this do exist in many countries and many regions but we are hoping to show that a certain program can work well in a particular context where it hasn’t been tried before.
Our program may well have elements that are not yet widespread e.g. particular drug regimens, dignostic tools or methods of program delivery (such as through schools or using mobile vans)
Have I understood correctly that the Global Fund wouldn’t be willing to fund the proof-of-concept and pilot programmes itself?
Yes you have understood correctly that we don’t expect to get Global Fund money going towards these early stages.
The Global Fund works on a 3 year cycles and provides money for a country’s national TB program over that period.
We’re hoping to introduce a new program that we don’t expect a government / national TB program to already have funding for from the Global Fund. Though, in time, we hope that it will become part of the national TB program activities.
Hope that answers your questions!

Habiba Banu

Spiro: an up­date 2.5 years on and a fundrais­ing ask for expansion

Spiro: an update 2.5 years on and a fundraising ask for expansion