While the issues of development are myriad, perhaps none are more fundamental than funding and sustainability. When it comes to cheap, reliable and sustainable transportation, nothing can beat the bicycle in terms of efficiency and reach.

Since 1988, JOICFP in cooperation with the Municipal Coordinating Committee on Bicycle Assistance (MCCOBA) has donated from Japan over 51,000 reconditioned bicycles with spare parts to 89 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and the South Pacific.

The demand for bicycles is still far greater than JOICFP can meet as bicycles can be used for many different purposes. Many bicycles are delivered to IPPF member associations who use them to reduce morbidity and mortality from delayed treatment and lack of access to services. Pregnant women often have difficulties at night when health services are closed, and bicycles can help these women reach other assistance.

One of the crosscutting issues in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is lack of access, and bicycles can impact lack of information, poverty, infant and maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases.

Gender is also a MDG issue, and bicycles, often used by traditional birth attendants and other female health workers, raise the status of women as they are seen to be working for the community. Furthermore, this recognition motivates volunteers, as does that fact that people in a developed country (Japan) care about their health and make efforts to send the bicycles in the first place.

The cost of providing one four-wheel drive vehicle is equivalent to that of about 200 to 300 bicycles. While the vehicle then needs fuel, maintenance and a driver, bicycles need no fuel, can operate 24 hours a day, need little maintenance, and little training to operate. One bicycle in Tanzania can be used by a grassroots worker to cover up to 500 to 800 people, with others covering 200 to 300, something no vehicle can manage. In addition, the infrastructure costs of providing roads and maintenance are often prohibitively high.

These reconditioned bicycles have been given
to female TBAs in Zambia,
promoting their mobility and social status
as workers in the community

Money

The MCCOBA bicycles are ones that have been illegally parked in the urban streets in Japan, confiscated by the authorities and then not reclaimed by the owners. The bicycles are renovated by volunteer bicycle mechanics, and the costs of spares, packing, stevedoring, shipping, and transporting from the docks to target areas are met by many different fundraising activities and corporate sponsorship.

Despite the urgent need for bicycles to support people's health, the fact they are reconditioned, and that they are delivered through the Japanese public's free efforts, some countries still deem it necessary to tax the bicycles on arrival.

Perhaps the greatest obstacles to health and development are not funding and sustainability but political will worldwide to really tackle the challenges at the grassroots level where assistance is most needed.