The majority of births in many parts of the world occur at home without access to skilled attendants, lifesaving medicines or emergency obstetric care, increasing preventable neonatal and maternal deaths. Nevertheless, many women are reluctant to labor at health centers due to the cost and poor availability of local transportation to referral hospitals. A recent study in rural Uganda tripled the number of institutional deliveries by addressing this transportation challenge through paper vouchers . Unfortunately, paper vouchers require prohibitive administrative costs and lead to fraud and counterfeiting. We apply a simple technological innovation to overcome these problems, develop a novel reimbursement tool and strengthen existing community infrastructure.
Innovation: We describe a fully automated maternity “ambulance” system using an automated mobile phone platform and petrol vouchers, that is immune to fraud and needs little training or new infrastructure.