Sept 2023 Newsletter: Scaling Mama Rescue, Saving Lives Through Transportation
Boda Boda (Motorcycle) taxi driver transporting a women in labor with her husband from village to health center
In much of the world, women in labor cannot access a safe delivery. Imagine living in a remote rural village many miles from the nearest health facility, with poor, often impassable roads. Over just the past two years, our Mama Rescue Project, with your support, and that of Enabel, the Belgian Development Agency, and Spring Fertility, has transported 27,373 women in labor from village to health center, reducing the time to reach a skilled attendant at birth from 1 ½ hours to just 15 minutes. Mothers and babies with life threatening complications have also benefitted, with 3229 emergency referrals facilitated, with the time of transit reduced from 3 ½ hours at baseline to just 34 minutes.
Mama Rescue is a simple mobile phone app that links women in labor to motorcycle taxi drivers. This innovative and cost-effective program also promotes antenatal care attendance, as a free transport voucher is given to women at their fourth visit. BAMA research has shown that women who attend at least four antenatal care visits, have an 81% probability of delivering in a government-funded health facility, where BAMA-trained midwives provide improved maternal and newborn care. The app also links women and babies with complications to automobile taxis that serve as lifesaving ‘ambulances’ providing rapid transport from health center to hospital. Our tech solution also transmits critical health information, ahead of patients’ arrival, ensuring that midwives and doctors are prepared to deliver the best of care.
Over the past week senior BAMA staff in Uganda have been meeting with our partners at Enabel, discussing the potential to scale the BAMA/Mama Rescue model to the districts of Kabarole and Kasese in western Uganda. If these discussions bear fruit, this will be the first time that Babies and Mothers Alive will expand beyond the Masaka Region, where we have implemented our comprehensive maternal and newborn care program for the past eight years. We have also engaged in discussions with USAID, the ELMA, and Vodofone Foundations, who’s M-Mama Program is a similar IT solution in Tanzania and Kenya. Together, we are proving that through strong and creative partnerships with district governments and health providers, we can leverage local transportation resources to address a major barrier to access of quality health care.
Your support makes programs like Mama Rescue possible and we leverage your donations to greater government and foundation support, so that together we will see a future where every woman in labor is attended by a skilled midwife or physician.
Thank you for sharing our vision of quality health care as a human right!
