Volunteer for a startup stopping the silent chronic disease epidemic in Africa! 🏥

Chetacare delivers predictive chronic disease management to African patients through continuous monitoring between clinic visits, ensuring no patient falls through the cracks of the healthcare system.

Africa is facing a silent crisis: over 150 million adults live with hypertension, yet 93% remain at daily risk of stroke or heart failure due to inadequate control. Furthermore, 4 in 5 Africans with diabetes are completely undiagnosed. Structural barriers—including the high cost of medicine, a concentration of doctors in urban centers, and the lack of professional follow-up—mean that more than half of diagnosed patients stop taking life-saving treatment once they leave the clinic. Without continuous monitoring, manageable conditions often progress silently until they become fatal emergencies.

Chetacare fills this critical gap by providing a predictive management platform that manages everything that happens after a patient walks out of the clinic door. We reach users through three simultaneous channels—a mobile app, WhatsApp, and an IVR voice system for rural communities without internet—providing daily medication reminders, refill alerts, and symptom tracking regardless of a patient's digital literacy. Our predictive triage engine scores every patient daily, allowing stable patients to be monitored automatically while flagging at-risk individuals for immediate follow-up or referral to the nearest clinic before a crisis occurs. By building portable Electronic Health Records and conducting direct community screenings, Chetacare transforms a reactive health system into a proactive, continuous network that prevents emergencies and restores health for millions.

Role (Volunteer, unpaid): WhatsApp AI Chatbot Developer (Healthcare)

Role Description: This role is not for everyone.

We are not looking for a generalist developer with surface-level API experience. We are looking for someone who can build a WhatsApp chatbot that actually works ( in production, with real users, under real conditions.

If that is you, and you want your skills to mean something keep reading.

The Problem You Will Be Solving

Over 40 million Nigerians live with hypertension. Most are undiagnosed. Most who are diagnosed stop their medication within months, because no system follows up with them between clinic visits.

Cheta is that system. A WhatsApp-native AI companion that checks in with patients daily, tracks their medication adherence, educates them about their condition, and routes them to a real clinician the moment something looks wrong.

You will build the infrastructure that makes this possible.

What You Will Build

• A production-grade WhatsApp chatbot using the Meta WhatsApp Business Cloud API
• Conversational AI integration using Anthropic Claude or OpenAI, powering Cheta's multilingual health conversations
• Webhook architecture for real-time message handling at scale
• Session and state management for multi-turn patient conversations
• A clinician-facing escalation dashboard for live doctor and dietician consultations
• Appointment booking and calendar scheduling integration
• Multilingual message handling across English, Pidgin, Yoruba, Hausa, and Igbo
• A secure, well-documented, scalable codebase the team can build and grow on

You Are the Right Person If:

• You have built and deployed at least one WhatsApp chatbot that handled real users in production
• You are proficient in Node.js or Python and highly comfortable with REST APIs and webhooks
• You have integrated an LLM — OpenAI, Anthropic, Dialogflow, or similar, into a working product
• You write clean, documented, maintainable code
• You can work independently, take ownership, and see a project through to completion
• You are genuinely interested in healthcare, patient impact, or African healthtech even if you have not worked in the sector before

This Role Is Not For You If:

• You have only built chatbots using no-code tools like ManyChat, Landbot, or Tidio
• You have never worked directly with the WhatsApp Business API in a live environment
• You are looking to learn WhatsApp API development for the first time on this project
• You need extensive technical guidance to get started

We respect your time. We want to be upfront so only the right person applies.

What You Will Gain

• Full technical ownership of a healthcare AI product serving thousands of patients across Africa
• Co-builder credit on Chetacare's core platform
• A high-impact portfolio project with real, measurable patient outcomes
• A strong reference letter and LinkedIn recommendation upon completion
• A long-term relationship with our team, with first consideration for a paid role as Chetacare grows
• The satisfaction of knowing your code is keeping people alive

Chetacare is building the infrastructure that follows patients home after every clinic visit, so no one falls through the cracks. Come build it with us.

Your health, always remembered.

Time Commitment: Volunteer 7-9 hours per week for 3-5 months remotely 💻

If you want to make change happen, apply to volunteer with Chetacare now!