Transport for Health Access Workshop

• Background
• Description of workshop objectives
• Agenda and Presentations

Background
Inadequate or unaffordable transport infrastructure and services often reduce poor people’s ability to access preventive, curative, and emergency health services and can result in lower health status and high mortality rates. Although health outcomes have improved in the second half of the 20th century, progress has slowed down in the 1990s, and at the current pace, most regions of the developing world will not reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for Health by 2015. Improving transportation access to health facilities in the context of health systems strengthening could improve overall health systems and referral performance, thereby leading to improved health outcomes.

Description of workshop objectives
In the context of the multisector aspects of the World Bank new Health Strategy and the Transport Business Strategy for 2008-2012, the workshop will serve as a platform for reviewing current knowledge on the main transport-related barriers to maternal health and child care as well as some of the transport interventions to improve access. The discussion will focus on the role of transport within the broader context of health referral systems, reviewing experience with community transport interventions; the role of non-motorized transport such as bicycles as convenient and cost efficient means of transport; and other experience that can lead to an improvement in the quality and efficiency of transport systems to improve health, while reducing maternal and child mortality in particular. The workshop will seek to draw recommendations for the World Bank and invited partners on what should be concrete short and longer-term steps for creating effective linkages between the health and the transport sectors of the World Bank and organizations concerned with health services provision.

Agenda and Presentations
(all presentations available in PDF format )