Transport-related interventions to improve maternal health

Greico and Turner (2005) have developed a toolkit on gender, transport and maternal mortality that provides examples of transport interventions designed to improve access to maternal health services in Senegal, Mali, Malawi, Uganda and Ghana. Most evidence linking transport interventions to successful maternal health outcomes is limited to localised examples. Evidence of sustainable good practice and the successful scaling up of these interventions to country and regional level is scarce (Babinard and Roberts, 2006).

This section presents a brief overview of interventions aimed at addressing some of the transport-related factors that prolong women or their families’ decision to seek care and create obstacles for women in reaching and receiving adequate care.

Interventions aim at doing the following:

• Reducing the burden of cost of emergency transport
• Preparing for delivery
• Reducing the distance to EmOC and other child-birth related services
• Improving transport infrastructure
• Increasing access to adequate and acceptable transport
• Improving transport and communication between health centres