Background

Reliable transport of primary healthcare services is severely lacking in large rural areas of many developing countries. Young children and mothers in particular are deprived of this basic human right. Lack of effective healthcare restricts development in more ways than missed school attendance. The type of health services include vaccinations and nutrition for infants, collection for analysis of blood samples in treating illnesses such as malaria and dengue fever, health education for mothers.

A high proportion of the population of developing countries are not getting the health services they are entitled to because health ministry motorcycles and other vehicles used to deliver them are not working, or are completely absent. This is because training and ongoing mechanical needs are ignored when budgets are allocated. Repairs to fix mechanical problems caused by lack of preventive maintenance are prohibitively expensive, so these repairs are rarely made. In many cases poor road conditions mean that many easily preventable and easily curable diseases are never treated.

Motorcycle Outreach (MoR) introduces a proven method of ensuring that vehicles do not break down, thereby providing dependable and sustainable health services to remote populations. Motorcycle Outreach ensures the pioneering system of 'zero breakdown' vehicle management can be introduced in other developing world countries on other continents, specifically South East Asia, Indonesia and Latin America.

With effective vehicle management, health ministries in the target countries will be able to operate vehicles that never break down, however difficult the road conditions may be. The lifespan of vehicles can be expected to double or triple, the vehicles would never be out of action for repairs and populations would receive the health services they are entitled to on a reliable basis.

Motorcycle Outreach is currently concentrating on fundraising for the continued support and expansion of Health for All in Indonesia. In the longer term MoR will continue to build upon Simon Milward's vision of a global network of zero breakdown healthcare delivery in developing countries.