Bicycle Ambulance peddle to the rescue

Story by: Andiyesa Mahango
Complied and Edited by Krystle Praestiin

People in Golden village will not forget the grief that struck the village on the 28th of August 2010 due to the death of Musano Gata aged 30 from measles.

That evening, upon hearing of Ms. Gata’s worsening illness her relatives ran up and down the streets of Golden Village searching for transport to the District Hospital, located 17 kilometers away from her home. Their efforts found that the community’s bicycle ambulance, which also serves four neighboring villages, was in Kadewere Village, four kilometers away. Their solution was to construct an improvised stretcher made from bamboo and walk the distance to the hospital. On the journey to the hospital however, Ms Gata’s condition deteriorated rapidly and before she made it to the hospital she died.

Ms Gata’s story is a heartbreaking reality for many people living in communities situated long distances from health facilities that do not have a readily available form of transport like and ambulance bicycle.

ADRA Malawi with the support of private donors who have donated to the ADRA International gift catalogue, “Bicycle Ambulances for Malawi,” are working together to provide communities with this much needed form of transport. The Bicycle Ambulance project will enable selected communities to have a permanent means of transportation for sick and injured people that need access to health facilities.

In Zambia, the Bicycle Ambulance project implemented in 2009 was found to increase access to health facilities significantly. 86% of trips to health facilities on Bicycle Ambulances were found to be lifesaving.

Currently, ADRA Malawi has only been able to obtain 36 bicycle ambulances. This means we still need 50 more bicycles to reach our target of 90. So we need your help, to achieve this goal and together we can contribute to saving the lives of many community members by increasing a person’s timely access to health facilities.

Go to http://giftcatalog.adra.org/search/gift_search/malawi to support this project.


note: photo obtained from http://www.treehugger.com/namibia-bicycle-ambulance.jpg - it is an example of the type of bicycle ambulances that will be used here in Malawi.