In
Summary:If you suddenly find yourself in labour pain, in a deeply rural
area in Uganda, chancesare,
if that birth has complications, you and
the baby might not survive. Health centres are too far for many
women.
That is why the village ambulance has been a godsend for many women and
communities in general.
Bundibugyo, Uganda.
The idea
of the village ambulance in Uganda is one that was born from unusual
circumstances. At the age of seven, tragedy visited Christopher
Ategeka's home in
Kagote, Kabarole District. He helplessly looked on as
both his father and mother
succumbed to the HIV/Aids epidemic, leaving
him to fend for his four siblings. (FS)
Within a
year of his parents passing, his brother, too, died of unknown causes
while
being taken to the hospital. When all hope seemed to be lost,
Carol Adams, an American,
through her locally based organisation, Youth
Encouragement Services (YES) that caters
for needy children, took on his
guardianship. Adams saw Ategeka through his primary and
secondary
education.
She
recalls how during his primary school, he would walk from his
grandmother's place in
Kagote to school. "We got him a bicycle to help,
but even that was not enough. We had
to get him to stay at his
grandfather's place in Fort Portal Town where he was closer to
school,"
says Adams.
After
secondary school, Adams used her connections to get Ategeka a foster
family
in the United States during which time he pursued a Master's
Degree at the University
of California.
Upon his
return to Uganda in 2011, Ategeka recounts how recollections from his
past fostered the notion that low-cost transportation would not only
improve livelihoods
but also save lives. "I used to walk miles to
Ruteete, a rural school I went to. That
bicycle that I got from Carol
Adams' orphanage changed everything from walking
miles to riding in
minutes to reach school," he says.
"When I
started CA bikes, a non-profit organisation, we began by making bicycles
and wheelchairs, and I felt more needed to be done." He explains how he
used the
knowledge he had acquired and came up with the idea of a
bicycle ambulance.
"The design, however, was a challenge. We came up
with about 12 designs until
we figured out something that would work,"
Ategeka says.
The
design he picked on was one inspired by Darly Funk, a 59-year-old
American
inventor of the village ambulance, which at the time was being
manufactured in
Zambia and distributed to more than five different
countries in Africa.
So using
locally sourced parts and scraps of metal and a small team of skilled
craftsmen, Ategeka and his team started to assemble the ambulance and
distribute
it out of the district. "Within three years, we have
distributed 120 ambulances that
now serve more than 10,000 people in
communities nationwide," he says.
However,
this was not the first time for the village ambulance to be applied in
Africa as a transport solution bridging patients in rural areas to
health care centres.
It all began in 2007 in Zambia with an organisation
called Zambikes, offering
unique transportation solutions in Africa.
"Currently,
the village ambulance is being applied in 29 districts in regions
all
over the country and we have distributed 177 ambulances," says Jared
White,
the operations director Pulse, an ambulance bike firm.
Delivery
of services such as palliative care, whose access in the country as per
2011 World Health Organisation statistics was at a 10 per cent low, have
also been
improved by the advent of the village ambulance.
"I was
very excited when I first used the ambulance because for so long I was
stuck
at home ill and couldn't reach the health centre for treatment,
but that ambulance
changed that. It has helped me to move conveniently,"
narrates one beneficiary,
Annet Rukundo, a 33-year-old lady from
Kyangwali refugee settlement in western
Uganda.
Today,
Ategeka believes that improving the healthcare system in the country
heavily
depends on the innovation and reveals his organisation CA Bikes
is in the process
of propping up new ones. "We are now taking on the
mobile clinic. It will be the
next innovation we roll out," he
says.(SUNDAY MONITOR)
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