News & stories

META's article on the history of Riders for Health and our charity partner Two Wheels for Life

How Riders is optimising access to healthcare services in Lesotho with DataKind and the Operations Research Society of South Africa (ORSSA)

How Riders for Health Intends to Use Computer Vision to Digitize Health Forms

Providing world-class vehicle management and healthcare mobilisation services to African nations, Riders were on the front line as the nations we work in responded to the outbreak COVID-19. 

Riders have established ourselves as world leaders in the management and maintenance of vehicles for health-focused organisations. Currently running transport programmes in five African countries, we have a reputation for exceptionally high standards. But how do we keep our quality of service high across multiple country programmes as time passes, staff change and systems evolve?

Since 2013, Riders for Health have been the national sample transport operator in Malawi. With the outbreak of Covid-19, it was natural that we were tasked by the Malawian government with providing all sample transport to the nation in relation to the virus. 

Riders’ countrywide network of health workers and emergency transport services has become more important than ever with the outbreak of Covid-19. 

Lesotho reported its first case of COVID-19 on 13th May, the last African country to do so. Numbers of cases are are rising and deaths are being reported daily. Two Wheels have been able to help fight the challenge faced by the Lesotho programme with motorcycles, ambulances, training, digital services and additional staff.

Riders have been transporting COVID-19 samples from seven health facilities in Kano State, northern Nigeria to laboratories and returning test results.

We have partnered with DataKind as part of our digital transformation programme to explore new and powerful ways to produce digital data from handwritten forms in an aim to create greater efficiencies in their healthcare delivery service and allow them to reach patients faster and more efficiently.

Unless the information and materials they need can reach people across Africa we will be witnessing a devastating picture. We can get to those communities using motorcycles.

Academics undertook a comparative economic study of the costs and cost-effectiveness of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) versus motorcycles in Liberia, for transportation of laboratory samples.

Managing transportation logistics are critical for keeping outbreaks at bay. The Liberian Ministry of Health now contracts with Riders for Health to manage its transportation logistics and fleet of vehicles. In 2017, they responded to 40 outbreaks identified across the country. These outbreaks could have spread widely had samples not reached the laboratories quickly.

Salifu Jabang, head technician at Riders for Health, The Gambia on why motorcycles work for delivering healthcare in his homeland.

We are transforming how we collect and analyse data to allow health workers to have more time to spend in communities, to save money and time on data administration improve our service to save more lives in the countries where we work.

Therese Drammeh, Country Director of Riders for Health The Gambia talks about some of the issues the country faces and about how the Riders solution.

The question of gender confronted Riders from the outset. Some people said that women should not ride motorcycles. But that made no sense to us as so many of the health workers who needed reliable transport to do their jobs were - of course - women.

Riders' teams from across four country programmes spent a week workshopping the components of Riders' unique system. The aim was to create a manual that ensure all teams are following the same rigorous practices and could be used by new programmes as Riders prepares to expand across the continent.