Social entrepreneurs, Barry Coleman explains, consistently
ride in that cushion, where there is plenty of potential to get ahead and just
as much to slide out of control. It is a place where guts and determination are
required, and where skill
and expertise can pay off. Barry should know. He and his wife aren’t just
race enthusiasts, they are social entrepreneurs: founders of Riders for Health,
an organization that manages transportation systems for the delivery of health
care in seven countries
across sub-Saharan Africa.
The miserable health-care equilibrium in Africa, the Coleman’s
would argue, is kept in place partly by its failing infrastructure. Too often, available medicine and
equipment can’t get where they are most urgently needed. Health workers waste
hours each day walking and waiting, rather than delivering care. Communities go
weeks and months without meaningful access to health care, even in times of
desperate need. All of these problems result from gaps in infrastructure, but
it was one gap in particular that tweaked the notice of this pair of motorcycle
enthusiasts: African health systems were failing because they lacked the
underlying transportation
systems needed for reliable health-care delivery.
It isn’t the stuff of banner headlines. But in Africa (or,
for that matter, anywhere else), if reliable transportation is not part of the
health-care delivery system, people die. To Andrea and Barry Coleman, the
reality that they encountered — a health-care delivery system hobbled by
inadequate transportation management infrastructure — was utterly unacceptable.
They envision a very different equilibrium, a future transformed, in
which African health ministries are equipped with reliable, affordable, and
effective transportation systems that deliver the health-care services their
people need, when, where, and how they need them. And it turns out motorbikes
have an important role to play.
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