An article on South Sudan’s bike ambulances paints a very different picture of motorcycles than usually found in hospitals.

There are certainly more comfortable ways to go to hospital than a motorbike with a sidecar bed attached to its side.

But the launch of these ambulance motorbikes in South Sudan is a serious attempt to tackle some of the world’s highest rates of women dying in pregnancy.

[…]

“The advantage of the motor bikes is that they can easily be managed at a lower level health facility,” said Joyce Mphaya, a safe motherhood specialist with the UN children’s fund (Unicef), which donated the bikes.

“It is cost-effective in terms of fuel, and you can easily move with the motorbikes to remote places, where there are no roads and where cars cannot go.”

[…]

Sudan is not the first to use motorbike ambulances.

In Malawi, similar bikes helped more than halve maternal mortality rates over a period of four years.

They also helped halve the numbers of emergency caesarean sections, because they got the women to hospital before an operation was needed.

That is a hugely successful program to manage risk. No mention of fatalities or even accidents from use of the motorbikes?