Coleman Andrea
Organization: Riders for Health
Year Founded: 1988
Country: United Kingdom
Website: www.riders.org
Riders for Health ensures health workers in Africa have access to reliable transportation so they can reach the most isolated people with regular healthcare services. Focus: Health Geographic Area of Impact: Gambia, Kenya, Lesotho, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zimbabwe Model: Hybrid Non-Profit Number of Direct Beneficiaries: 10.8 million (2009) Annual Budget: US$ 7,093,000 (2009) Percentage Earned Revenue: 50.2% (2008) Recognition: Schwab Fellows of the World Economic Forum Background Currently, 30,000 children under the age of five die each day across the developing world from preventable or treatable diseases, including measles, diarrhoea and malaria. Immunization programmes still do not reach 30 million children each year and measles and tetanus kill more than one million children under five each year. Birth-related complications contribute to nearly one-third of all newborn deaths. Access to skilled healthcare personnel could reduce these deaths, but more than half of women in sub-Saharan Africa give birth alone or with untrained assistance. Often, the one factor preventing the delivery of healthcare is the lack of managed transportation. A large part of Africa has no infrastructure for motor vehicle maintenance that would ensure lasting and cost-efficient transportation, and facilitate a lifeline for needed goods and supplies. Innovation and Activities It only takes a few hours to reach any capital in the world by plane, but it can take days and many hardships to reach the more rural areas in developing countries. Many development efforts fail because distribution proves to be a key neglected component. Food supplies, new drugs, vaccines and other critical health products are useless unless they reach their destination. Riders for Health addresses these delivery obstacles by managing vehicles to support those organizations whose remit is to reach the rural poor in sub-Saharan Africa with healthcare and vital services. By using a motorcycle, for example, health workers have increased their number of visits to remote communities by at least 300%. Riders for Health manages more than 1,000 vehicles involved in direct healthcare delivery. A conservative estimate shows that 11 million people are receiving regular, reliable healthcare thanks to Riders’ programmes. In one district in Zimbabwe, death rates from malaria decreased by 20% after health workers were equipped with motorcycles and could cover 96% of the district with preventive services, mosquito nets and anti-malarial drugs. Riders for Health’s innovative transport systems incorporate training in driving skills, daily maintenance procedures, fuelling supply-chain logistics for replacement parts and interval preventative maintenance. The organization places great emphasis on building local capacity to manage and maintain its vehicles. As a result, Riders is able to operate fleets of vehicles in the harshest conditions with a 0% breakdown rate for five years or longer. The system has also demonstrated that a properly managed vehicle will save more than 50% of costs over a six-year period, compared to an unmanaged vehicle. Riders has a solid base of experience, expertise and specialist knowledge built over nearly 20 years of operating in sub-Saharan Africa. It currently operates on a national scale in Zimbabwe and the Gambia in full contractual partnership with their health ministries, and work on a sub-national scale with partner agencies (either NGOs, UN agencies or community-based organizations) in Lesotho, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria. The Entrepreneurs Andrea and Barry Coleman met through a common interest in motorcycles. During several trips to Africa in the late 1980s, they encountered vehicles intended for healthcare delivery that were broken due to lack of preventive maintenance. The Colemans realized that the development community needed a special focus on vehicle management if any progress was to be made in the vital area of disease prevention and eradication in Africa. Andrea Coleman is chief executive officer and has guided the financial and advocacy development of Riders, including innovative fundraising initiatives that have enabled organizational growth. Barry Coleman, executive director, is designer of the groundbreaking Transport Resource Management and Transport Asset Management systems and the Riders cost-per-kilometre calculator.
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