Riders For Health
Living in the heart of Europe, where access and communication everywhere is so easy, we may find it hard to imagine that millions in rural areas in other countries suffer and die because vital medical supplies do not reach them.
The majority of the population of sub-Saharan Africa lives in rural areas where even the best roads are little more than dirt tracks. Public transport is infrequent, and delivery of health care supplies on foot or by bicycle between sparse villages is exhausting and ineffective. Without reliable transport, the millions of dollars invested in vaccines, drugs, bed nets, condoms and trained health professionals every year is wasted if they fail to get where they are needed and on time.
Enter Andrea and Barry Coleman from the U.K., who since their youth were and still are motorcycle racing enthusiasts and experts. In the 1980s they worked with American motorcycle racing star Randy Mamola and began raising money for a charity working with children in Africa.
In 1988 they went to see one of their programmes in Somalia to see how their money was being used. They visited an immunization project, and to their distress found the health workers were not reaching children in remote rural villages. The motorcycles that should have been used to deliver vaccines were piled up behind the clinic, broken down and rusting. The riders had not been trained to look after them; there were no spare parts, and so they broke down after very few kilometres.
The Colemans realized it was no good just donating vehicles. It was vital to have those vehicles maintained correctly by well-trained technicians, and to have the tools and replacement parts to service them properly. And so the idea for Riders for Health blossomed.
In 1991 they began managing 47 bikes in Lesotho that delivered health care services for five years without a breakdown.
In 1996 Riders for Health became an independent organization and expanded its work. Today Riders for Health manages 1,400 vehicles in seven countries in Africa and is transforming health care for 14 million people. As well as managing motorcycles, they have diversified their fleets to include trucks, minivans and ambulances.
Andrea says that the core of their work is training and preventive vehicle maintenance. “To ensure health care reaches everyone who needs it we must have transport, and that transport must be well maintained and managed so it is reliable. With reliable vehicle fleets, we ensure that the health care delivery chain is never broken and millions of people can be reached with the care they need regularly and predictably.”
Networks of highly skilled technicians regularly travel to the rural areas to service vehicles in the communities. This means health workers don’t waste precious time travelling to a repair station but can spend more time with their patients.
Andrea and Barry believe passionately that communities should manage their own projects, their own fleets and their own teams, and all of Riders for Health’s programmes are led and staffed by local people. Andrea and Barry have spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos about their social enterprise schemes that help people to help themselves and have received many awards.
Riders for Health has a vision: “A world in which health care reaches everyone, everywhere.” Their mission is to make the “last mile” the most important mile in health care delivery: creating, showing and sharing the solutions for achieving truly equitable health care. Visit the Riders for Health website for more information.
By Joanna Koch
Joanna is a MM team member who recently met Riders for Health for the first time. She represents the Associated Country Women of the World at the UN in Geneva.
Photos by Tom Oldham used with permission from Riders for Health.
