Development NGO Riders for Health has added its support to the Make Roads Safe campaign.
Because of the terrible state of the majority of roads in rural Africa and the distances between rural communities delivering health care is incredibly difficult. One solution is to give health workers access to reliable transport, and make sure that it is properly managed.
But it is the condition of the roads, and the lack of experience with vehicles, which makes it essential that every mobile health worker is fully trained to ride or drive safely. This is the vital work of international NGO Riders for Health (www.riders.org), the latest organisation to give its support to the Make Roads Safe campaign - the international campaign to put global road traffic injuries on the G8 and UN sustainability agendas.
All the health workers that are mobilised by Riders for Health are trained how to ride or drive their vehicles safely, as well as being trained to look after them properly.
Riders have shown the impact mobile health workers can have on delivering health care in Africa. A health worker who is trained to use a motorcycle can see four times more people than a health worker who has to visit communities on foot. They will also see those communities 20 times more regularly. Health workers that see their communities more often will be better placed to diagnose illnesses and treat them effectively.
The impact has been clear. In the Binga district of Zimbabwe, where Riders have mobilised all sixteen outreach health workers, malaria deaths have decreased by 21%, compared with a 44% increase in a neighbouring region where Riders was not operating.
In 2002, after Riders began operating in the Gambia, there was a 261% increase in diagnoses of diarrhoea, a 75% increase in diagnoses of acute respiratory infection, and 55% increase in the diagnosis of malaria, compared to 2001. Riders has also helped increase the proportion of fully immunised infants in the country from 62% to 73%.
Riders believe that the answer to the problems of reaching isolated communities with regular health care is to use 21st century technology – properly managed. By selecting the right vehicles, and by training health workers in how to look after them and ride them safely, Riders works to make sure rural communities can always be confident that their health worker will reach them.
The Principal of Riders for Health’s International Academy for Vehicle Management (IAVM), Alfred Gonga, who runs road safety training programmes in Gambia, Lesotho, Kenya and Zimbabwe explains that in the past, newly employed field-staff were issued a new motorcycle without any training. “The motorcycles would have a very short lifespan due to lack of basic maintenance by the rider and because of their lack of skill in riding,” says Alfred, “Some of their staff were even involved in accidents and were injured.” This is now a thing of the past.
But recognising that road crashes are in themselves a significant health impact, and much more needs to be done to improve road safety in the countries in which they operate, has led Riders to support the Make Roads Safe campaign. “We are grateful for the support and testimony of Riders for Health”, says Saul Billingsley, the campaign’s coordinator. “This is an organisation working on the ground in countries with very poor road and road safety conditions, and every day they experience the really negative impact that poor infrastructure and low levels of safety can have on the delivery of life-saving health services. Vaccines, health and social programmes – and the Millennium Development Goals – won’t be delivered if help can’t get to the people who need it because of undeveloped or unsafe roads, badly trained drivers and unsafe vehicles. This is what both Riders for Health and the Make Roads Safe campaign are working to address.”
The true measure of the empowerment that safe mobility has on a health worker can be seen in the faces of the health workers themselves. Alfred Gonga sums it up perfectly by saying, ’It really gives me a great sense of satisfaction when people come for training scared and jittery, and at the end of the week they will be enjoying it so much we have to force them off the bike! You can tell what it means to them and the difference it will make to the way they will do their work of helping the needy.”
If you would like to find out more about the work of Riders for Health and the IAVM, then click here. (www.riders.org)