Learning and Growing
MAZA is pleased to be in its second year of providing transportation for urgent and emergency health care needs in remote rural areas of Northern Region. We are continuing work in our first district, Chereponi, after several iterations of our model and we are getting ready to begin in a second district, Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo (BY), this... Read More
Fine Tuning As We Go
MAZA is ten months into operations already! We are making good progress on several fronts. We are also learning so many things about our model that we did not expect and are adjusting as needed to improve our service. Join us as we share our journey so far with you. Operations As of October 31,... Read More
Footprints and Milestones
MAZA’s second quarter of operations was marked by several important milestones. First, the number and diversity of the clinical conditions of people requesting urgent health transportation rides from MAZA continued to increase. Between the launch of MAZA on December 17, 2015 and June 30, 2016, we transported 59 people in need of urgent or emergency... Read More
MAZA, what’s that? You mean “nde nde”?
MAZA just completed its first quarter of operations and we are pleased to share our progress to date. Since we launched on December 17, 2015 in Chereponi District in the Northern Region of Ghana we have been working hard to ensure that our responses to phone calls for urgent health care transportation are timely and... Read More
MAZA, six weeks on: good progress, learning and adjustments
It’s been six weeks since MAZA launched its operations in Chereponi District in the Northern Region of Ghana. And in this short time we have already learned so much about what works well, what doesn’t and how we can do better. In this blog, we are pleased to share our progress to date, what we... Read More
MAZA, transportation saving lives in rural Ghana: from concept to reality
MAZA, the social enterprise I have been working on for most of 2015, has finally launched! The launch event took place on Thursday, 17 December, 2015 in Chereponi District in the Northern Region of Ghana. We had excellent turnout from local community members, traditional and political authorities as well as leaders from district, regional and national... Read More
Getting to hospital too late to be helped: the case of Abiba Kojo
Abiba Kojo had always had difficult deliveries. Of her six pregnancies, five children had been born: three alive and two dead. Although she lives just a stone’s throw from the Busunu Health Center, she never went to the clinic when she was pregnant with her first child, and she delivered at home. However, she... Read More
Overseas – accessing urgent health care during rainy season in rural Ghana
Stella Wullobong’s labor pains started at 4:00 am on the morning of August 29, 2009. Rain was falling hard, in the middle of the rainy season, in the remote Somboro area of the Upper West Region of Ghana. “I got up and my stomach was turning,” Stella explains. “Unfortunately, the rain started and I couldn’t... Read More
In labor for three days? Distance, transportation and permission barriers to seeking health care
Aderinuru Zubetegr, a soft-spoken young woman, holds a small child on her lap. The child, almost one year old but looking much younger (and malnourished), holds a wooden toy in her hand – a simple, hand-carved stick figure. “It is the replacement of the twin who died,” the mother explains. “I will keep it forever,... Read More
Access to urgent health care in rural areas: complex, but not impossible
Four years ago, I went from being perfectly well to seriously ill within the space of 12 hours. It all happened so quickly that it took me a while to figure out what was going on. The first clue was that I simply did not have the energy to do a “sun salutation,” a foundational... Read More