Billeh Rosemount was scared and in ache. The 24-year-old from a distant farming group in Northern Ghana was having a miscarriage, and he or she feared for her life.
“I was bleeding and the midwife could not control the blood,” she recalled.
The midwife at her group clinic needed to switch her to an even bigger well being facility however a traditional ambulance would have taken hours to reach, if it had come in any respect.
Instead, Rosemount was transported utilizing a tricycle ambulance. Powered by a motorbike engine and engineered to navigate slender, tough roads in areas the place ambulances are both scarce or impractical, the car was designed by Moving Health, a nonprofit tackling maternal mortality in Ghana.
Inside the tricycle ambulances is a full-length stretcher, area for a relative and a midwife or group well being employee, primary life help, an oxygen concentrator, and emergency birthing kits.
Rosemount obtained emergency care that day in October 2024 and recovered, however she says that with out the tricycle ambulance, the journey, a median of two hours for rural communities, would seemingly have been on the again of a bike — if her neighbor was keen to lend one.
“You have to go and beg for somebody to get the vehicle … It was very, very, very difficult for us,” Rosemount mentioned, including that pregnant ladies locally couldn’t at all times discover transport to hospital. “Due to that, you have to just sit in the house and give birth… you can lose one of the lives, the mother or the child.”
Though slowly declining, maternal mortality in Ghana stays comparatively excessive with 234 deaths per 100,000 reside births in 2023 — decrease than the regional common however 14 instances greater than within the US. Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for round 70% of global maternal deaths in 2023, based on the World Health Organization.
Studies present that the majority of those maternal deaths happen in rural areas, the place distance makes delays in receiving lifesaving care extra seemingly. Poverty and unreliable transportation can exacerbate these delays and enhance danger.
Moving Health designs and manufactures tricycle ambulances within the Upper West Region of Northern Ghana, at what it says is one tenth of the worth of typical autos, after which trains group well being employees to run emergency dispatch.
It stories having seen a 64% lower in transport time to hospitals from rural communities.
“Sometimes the biggest barrier to surviving a medical emergency isn’t the lack of hospitals,” mentioned Emily Young, CEO and co-founder of Moving Health, “it’s being able to get there in time.”
The initiative started as a challenge at MIT in 2016, designed by Young and some different mechanical engineering college students, and established everlasting operations in Ghana in 2019.
In 2020, a Ghanian information outlet reported that only 55 ambulances served your entire nation. A 2024 examine discovered that the nation’s National Ambulance Service had grown to 356 ambulances for a inhabitants of round 35 million. Moving Health has added a fleet of 31 tricycle ambulances throughout 5 districts, reaching greater than 230,000 individuals throughout rural Ghana in areas not served by the National Ambulance Service.
The ambulances are saved at community-level clinics, contactable by way of a hotline or shut sufficient for bike messengers to achieve if vital. Proximity is vital when cell connection is unreliable.
They transport sufferers anyplace from 50 to 100 kilometers (31 to 62 miles) to bigger district, regional or nationwide hospitals for extra advanced care.
Isaac Quansah, Moving Health’s chief know-how officer and nation director, skilled the ambulance scarcity firsthand after his spouse gave start to their first youngster.
Postnatal issues left her motionless, and Quansah — unable to search out an ambulance — drove her to the hospital in a small automobile, which required her to take a seat up in excruciating ache.
“When I design an ambulance, I know that I have a reason,” he instructed NCS. “A life-fulfilling purpose for me to help other mothers not go through what my wife went through.”
Quansah oversees native manufacturing in Northern Ghana, the place Moving Health employs and trains engineers.
The autos are upgraded yearly primarily based on suggestions from the group. After the preliminary design, well being employees defined that it’s frequent for girls to offer start halfway by their journey to the hospital, typically at night time.
“Can you imagine trying to (deliver a baby) with torch light in between your neck and your shoulder?” Quansah mentioned. “So they requested for a light and we included it, so now we can even deliver babies.”
Women expressed hesitancy to go to the hospital alone, so one other seat was added, for a companion, and drivers revealed areas of the car weakened from the tough roads, so the following mannequin reenforced these and had shock absorbers.
“All year round, the ambulance keeps improving,” Quansah mentioned.
Quansah oversaw design of the car’s online-offline GPS system, designed to map the placement of the ambulances even the place connections are unreliable, providing centralized coordination, and monitoring how lengthy it takes to achieve the hospital.
The ambulance tricycles price round $7,000 versus $75,000-$110,000, for a Basic Life Support Sprinter van ambulance. Current autos have been paid for by nonprofits and grants, however Moving Health hopes to make community-ownership accessible by growing a month-to-month cost system or a approach for communities to separate the price with native authorities.
Rather than counting on ongoing exterior funding, every group with a tricycle ambulance has a regionally managed Evergreen Fund, to cowl gasoline, drivers’ stipends and upkeep.
“Everybody contributes,” Quansah mentioned. “During farming season people contribute food to be sold, to be added to it.” He says the group sees the ambulance as “not a luxury (but) a necessity.”
Beyond emergency dispatch, Moving Health ambulances had been used to move Covid-19 vaccines in 2020 and now additionally join distant communities with prenatal and postnatal check-ups.
In early 2026, Moving Health wrapped up a yearlong “proof of concept” pilot with Ghana Health Services and Grand Challenges Canada, which funded a 10-ambulance fleet.
Last month it was featured by the United Nations alongside 60 initiatives globally in its Science, Technology & Innovation Solutions Book for 2026.
Moving Health has now attracted funding from a number of nonprofits and plans to scale the operation throughout the nation.
“Our (first) goal is national coverage in Ghana,” mentioned Young, “But we do think that it’s … able to be a blueprint for other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.”
The nonprofit additionally has plans for a centralized nationwide dispatch hub for emergency transport, in collaboration with the National Ambulance Service.
“Moving Health, it saves a lot of lives…” mentioned Rosemount, who’s now pregnant, once more. “We are happy and we appreciate, and we are praying for more to come in.”