The Road-MApp project is a mobile app to help women access maternal health care and facilitate transportation of pregnant women to care. Poor access to maternal care services is a known determinant for low rates of facility births and adverse maternal outcomes. In Zimbabwe, 73% of maternal deaths are attributed to delays in accessing care, resulting from long distances and travel times to health facilities, limited transport options and lack of transport funds for maternal care. Roads become hard to navigate during the wet season due to precipitation and floods, leaving many pregnant women vulnerable to poor maternal outcomes.

Road-MApp accounts for road and weather conditions in near-real time, and links women to local transport resources that are available to facilitate their transit to maternal care. Goals include establishing micro-savings groups to finance the process, a 25% increase in use of health facilities during pregnancy, and a 10% increase in in-facility deliveries.

 

 

Seasonal variation access to maternal health services at primary health care facilities (PHCs) in the CLIP study area in Mozambique. 49% of reproductive age women live within 1 hr walking time to PHCs in the dry season and this drops to 31% in the wet season, due to disruption of traffic infrastructure by rainfall and flooding