"Health's Angels"

As I was conducting research for my blog this week about social networking and health care, I came across an organization unlike any that I had ever heard about before and I thought it was interesting and pertinent enough to my topic for me to share it with all of you. In addition, this organization and their mission can be seen as a type of social networking, in a sense that people are coming together and networking with each other to form a larger group to assist in a common goal. While I know that many people consider social networking to be websites and techonlogical, I think that an organization like Health's Angels is a social network within itself. And while this may be a broad interpretation, it's the closest I have been able to come thus far to tying the topic into my personal blog topic.

The organization is called Riders for Health, and was started in 1986 by the Colemans who had been avid motorcycle riders for a number of years. Andrea Coleman, the founder of Riders for Health, had a vision after returning from a trip to Africa and seeing the terrible health conditions that existed in rural areas because of lack of transportation for the people and for medicines themselves. She also realized on her trip that there seemed to be a lot of broken down vehicles in Africa that could be used to help improve health care mobility if people knew how to fix and maintain them. While the organization now works with any types of vehicles, they run them in order to transport medical supplies and ill patients back and forth from hospitals to rural areas. This organization has made significant differences in health care in Africa by substantially reducing the time it takes to transport supplies and people.

Currently, the organization is planning to expand to Malawi and possibly to other nations in Africa eventually. I think it's interesting to look at something that is helping health care improve in other areas of the world that one would never consider. Using the knowledge that she had, Andrea Coleman was able to make a difference by helping to repair vehicles and make them sustainable for the residents of Africa to use in medical situations.