Description
Health Riders are helping people suffering from TB in Africa complete their treatment. The Kingdom of Lesotho in Africa has the fourth highest TB rate in the world and drug-resistant TB is a serious problem. A major cause of this drug resistance is patients not correctly completing their treatment regime.
Health Riders using motorbikes enables health workers to travel long distances and across rough terrain to find patients who are unwilling to complete their treatment. In this film we see that finding the patients is often not easy. Many people give an incorrect address and some people are even dead. This is often the case as many regard it as shameful to be suffering from TB and don’t want it known by their neighbours.
This is the fourth part of six short films which tell the story of what it takes to be a Health Rider. They have to combine knowledge of a range of health issues with how to ride a motorbike up a mountain and the basics of being a mechanic if the bike breaks down while on the daily rounds in an inhospitable part of Lesotho.
The mission of the Health Riders is to prevent someone from dying of an easily preventable or curable disease because they cannot be reached because of the barriers of distance, rough terrain or poverty. They strengthen heath systems by addressing one of the most neglected, yet vital aspects of development for the health of Africa – transport and logistics.