Our mission is to provide comprehensive community-based healthcare for children, adolescents, and their families living in precarious situations or poverty.
​
Health is an inalienable right of every child, as enshrined in Article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This article affirms every child's right to 'the highest attainable standard of health' and to 'facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health,' with a strong emphasis on the 'development of primary healthcare.'
​
Health and healthcare are not mere by-products of economic progress, which rarely or never reach the poorest. Rather, they are prerequisites for and means of sustainable development.
​
We serve as a bridge between the existing resources of health facilities—whether international, national, or local—and the lived experiences of the poorest and sickest communities in the world. The central idea of our mission is based on solidarity, as even children who have lost in the lottery of birth have the right to comprehensive healthcare and the empowerment for self-responsibility.
For healthcare to truly heal, it must go beyond evidence-based prevention and treatment of diseases. It must allow for access to sufficient food, safe living spaces, loving care, education, and the opportunity for play and leisure.
R. Hartel for odoVita
ANNUAL REPORT 2025
Humanity’s greatest strength may be our ability to adjust—to adapt to almost any circumstance. Yet this is also a curse. Over time, we stop being appalled by what we see every day and we grow used to the unacceptable. We build societies that allow our fellow human beings to live in such abysmal poverty.
But none of this is inevitable. It is human-made. And because it is human-made, it can be changed. The same is true for our health systems.
2025 brought much loss, and we mourn the deaths of loved ones and patients. We saw too many stupid deaths—deaths that could have been prevented by functioning health systems—haunting us. We carry these memories with us as we prepare to do more and do better. Yet we also know that others will follow—until the systems that fail them are changed.
But 2025 also brought hope. It brought the first “odoVita babies.” Babies born to mothers who received antenatal care at our community clinic—with essential supplements, testing, treatment for infections, and close monitoring for complications. Healthy babies. Babies with a good start in life.
In 2025, we relied on partnerships—both new and old—to work towards much-needed change. Our dedicated team—still small, but growing—worked tirelessly under difficult circumstances to care for others, while facing their own struggles and bearing our constant push to do more, and to do it better and faster.
In 2026, we continue—not because success is guaranteed, but because the work is worth doing. Because none of this is inevitable.
