Bike Town Africa: Health Story

Aired on Lifetime Television
Sunday, April 29 and June 10, 2007
Show 411

"It's one thing to help improve or change someone's life with a bike here. But in Africa, we know that if we give someone a bike, we could actually save the person's life," says Steve Madden, the editor of Bicycling Magazine. Steve and his group of volunteers venture to Africa as part of the magazine's Bike Town Africa project, donating bicycles to health care workers. "Before we gave them the bikes, a lot of the home healthcare workers were traveling only on foot. And in some cases, they could only reach one patient a day. Now with the bikes, what we found is that they've been able to extend their reach to an average of about five patients a day," says Madden. The donated bikes are used to deliver food and life-saving anti-viral medications to AIDS patients. "We'll work with HIV organizations in Namibia, where 45 percent of the population is HIV positive. And we'll also be doing a program in Senegal. This program should exist on every continent in the world," says Madden.