Moving Health is a nonprofit that designs, builds, and distributes motorcycle ambulances to provide safe and reliable medical transport in rural Ghana. They have launched a new ambulance design. Before developing the Tricycle, the organization spent two years collecting Ghanaian user feedback. Then, it incorporated that information into designing and building a vehicle patients trust to transport them to medical care.
The vehicle is a tricycle ambulance, leveraging the most common mode of transportation in the country’s rural areas. The design features a removable stretcher for the patient, seats for family members and medical personnel, and basic life support options.
The new ambulance is the country’s first Ghanaian Made Tricycle Ambulance, empowering local fabricators and suppliers and building economic growth. The organization’s manufacturing team, located in the Sissala East district, worked with master fabricators in Suame Magazine to develop the final design. The vehicles are now ready to be sold and deployed to new partners in the country.
Moving Health started a pilot project in Ghana by providing emergency transportation access to about 10,000 people—their latest step forward after the pilot was their tricycle Ambulance. Out of over 230 rides to the hospital, nearly 50% of those patients were women with pregnancy-related complications. All mothers and babies survived.
In addition to designing and manufacturing the tricycle ambulances, Moving Health works with the Local Health Directorate and Local National Ambulance Service to help create sustainable last-mile dispatch. They deploy ambulances in rural communities, shortening referral time to the hospital by up to 50% and creating a trusted and reliable system that works alongside the National Ambulance Service to boost the accessibility of ambulances in rural areas.
Moving Health (formerly called The Okoa Project) is a six-year-old nonprofit founded by three women engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Moving Health’s mission statement is: “We envision a world that allows every family to be connected to the healthcare they need when they need it.”
Source: https://www.moving.health/
