Is transport the key to reducing deaths in Africa?
14 September 2009
Groundbreaking social enterprise and leading US university to show impact of reliable transportation on reducing preventable disease in Africa.
The British-founded not-for-profit organisation Riders for Health has today [14th September] announced a landmark partnership with Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in a five-year project funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
‘For years, Riders for Health has been an effective logistics arm, serving as the last mile for health care delivery in Africa. We are very privileged to be partnering with them to make use of supply chain and logistics advances to scale up their operations. We are pleased that Riders’ grant from the Gates Foundation means that we can support Riders to save lives, while at the same time pushing the research frontier on the important subject of health delivery logistics,’ Said Hau Lee,Thoma Professor of Operations, Information and Technology at the Graduate School of Business, and Director of the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum at Stanford University.
The need for reliable transport is still critically misunderstood. Organisations working in Africa regularly lack the funding and expertise to run vehicles correctly in difficult conditions, and as a result, resources are wasted and health care does not reach those who need it.
Riders is a leading social enterprise which runs reliable transport systems for vital health care delivery in sub-Saharan Africa. This new partnership will prove the link between reliable transport and improved coverage of health care, particularly in rural African communities.
‘Unfailing reliability and full mobilisation means that the work of African governments in preventive and public-health guidance and in specific disease-care and immunisation programmes can be carried out with no unexpected downtime due to lack of transport. Our transport systems have the potential to transform the delivery of health care across the whole of sub-Saharan Africa and now, with the added focus on evaluation brought by this partnership we will be able to take it to a still larger scale,’ said Barry Coleman, co-founder and executive director of Riders for Health.
‘Reliable transport plays a crucial role in strengthening health systems. No public health interventions can be effective without it. Our partnership with the Stanford Graduate School of Business will allow us to measure and publicly demonstrate the impact that our work is having on health care in Africa. We are excited that we will soon be able to share a robust evidence base with the global health community and with other African governments,’ said Andrea Coleman, chief executive officer and co-founder of Riders for Health.
With the single focus of providing unfailing motorised mobility for skilled African health care workers, Riders has developed its own innovative technical system for running motorcycles and four-wheeled vehicles predictably so that they never break down, however difficult the conditions. The system prioritises preventive and long-range but regular mechanical maintenance as well as comprehensive training in safe riding and driving.
Riders has been expertly running cost-effective vehicle fleets for ministries of health and other health agencies on a growing scale for more than 20 years. Riders’ programmes in Africa are staffed entirely by nationals of the countries concerned. The operations use a unique, non-profit social business model which enables the client to be accurately charged for each kilometre travelled.
The grant awarded to Riders from the foundation will be used specifically to focus on demonstrating and evaluating the impact of Riders’ work on health systems and health technology uptake. Stanford’s Global Supply Chain Management Forum is the leading academic organisation in the world that works to advance the theory and practice of supply chain management and logistics.
Riders’ teams in the UK and Africa will work with the foundation and Stanford’s Global Supply Chain Management Forum in an attempt to demonstrate that Riders’ work results in:
• At least 45% increase in health workers’ productivity
• A 30% increase in coverage of key health care interventions
• At least 80% improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of vehicle fleet management.
The core research team includes public health and supply chain experts, and the Forum has an extensive network of supply chain and public health partners that they will draw from throughout the project period. Riders will be replicating its model in new countries to enable effective pre- and post-test randomised studies to be carried out by the Stanford team.
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