A women's cooperative in Senegal is offering low-cost health insurance to previously-uninsured market women.

A horse cart loaded with empty bottles rattles down a dirt lane outside Senegal's capital, past a small wooden stand selling fresh vegetables and dried fish.

Oulimatta Tigerre has been selling beans and bullion cubes from this stand since 1995. Old tires weigh down the twisted metal sheeting that keeps out the rain.

Tigerre is an independent businesswoman who lives in a cash economy. Hard work earned her enough money to buy a plot of land in the suburbs. But with her husband out of work, she worried about how to cover the family's medical bills.

Then a neighbor told her about a low-cost health insurance program through the women's cooperative credit union of the Network of Programs for Urban and Rural Women. For the equivalent of two dollars a month, Tigerre's family of five is covered.