Project Summary
The Landirani Trust is a registered charity currently supporting around 3,000 orphans in their villages in Malawi. It supports 13 centres in an area 400km2. The Trust is dedicated to helping children, whose childhoods have been suddenly taken away from them, due to illness, poverty and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The amount of affected children is incredible. A generation is slowly being eliminated, leaving the elderly to take care of the young
The Trust’s aims include:
• Promotion of educational facilities for all children in the community
• Enhancing the ability of the community to become self-sufficient
• Ensuring care of orphans and vulnerable people affected by HIV/AIDS
• Providing fresh water and sanitation
In early 2010 the Landirani Trust contacted Transaid to seek advice regarding the use of bicycle ambulances for transferring patients between in the rural areas of Lilongwe district in Malawi to local health centres. The Trust purchased five bicycle ambulance and Transaid helped with implementation and establishing a monitoring and evaluation system.
The Problem
Linking communities to health facilities is essential to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goal numbers 4 and 5 to reduce child and maternal mortality. However, there has been a failure to provide motorised transport to fill the gap existing in under resourced communities to access health care faster and many people die from preventable diseases. The bicycle ambulance offers one alternative solution to health care access in rural areas.
The Process
Transaid was invited to conduct training on how to use bicycle ambulances in an effective and sustainable manner. Transaid shared key learning points from the Transaid Zambia Bicycle Ambulance Project and advised the Trust on key issues to be aware of when placing bicycle ambulances within communities. The Landirani Trust t worked with an indigenous organisation named Sakaramenta in Blantyre to construct four bicycle ambulances. Victor Simfukwe, Transaid Zambia Programme Officer, visited Malawi for one week in August 2010 to deliver training for 30 community representatives and Ministry of Health staff involved in the project.
Training included:
• Positioning bicycle ambulances – community versus health centre
• Role of the community
• Establishment of bicycle ambulance committees
• Proper use of bicycle ambulances
• Maintenance
• Monitoring and evaluation
Partners
The Landirani Trust
The Impact
Transaid’s work on bicycle ambulances in Zambia highlighted the enormous benefit these ambulances can bring to rural communities. It also emphasised how quickly bicycle ambulances can become inoperable if they are not properly managed and maintained. By providing the Landirani Trust with Transaid’s expertise we are helping to ensure their community projects in Malawi are even more successful than previously.
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