Soon after joining the Rotary Club of Oadby in 2007, Roger Neuberg was leading a major service project which went on to save thousands of lives.
Having given voluntary service maternity hospitals in The Gambia, West Africa, the consultant obstetrician had a dream… to provide ambulances rugged enough to transport pregnant women. The Mbale region of Uganda is home to a million people, but has villages linked by rough roads which become impassable to four-wheel-drive ambulances in the rainy season.
Roger met Mike Norman who had invented the e-Ranger a motorbike with sidecar that serves as an ambulance. In Mbale, infant and maternal death rates are many times higher than in the UK. Over the next three years persuasive speaker Roger drove 3,500 miles and and gained the trust and support of Rotary clubs across the UK.
With donations from Rotary clubs and grants, including from The Rotary Foundation, Roger raised £143,000, enough to buy a fleet of 32 e-Rangers, built in South Africa. Until they arrived in Mbale, Roger had only ever seen one, on which he had been driven into conferences. When all 32 lined up, he sobbed, he told Leicester Novus Rotary Club.
Novus was one of the many clubs that helped Roger’s dream come true. Since it went into service in June 2014, the machine sponsored by Novus has answered 2,583 emergency call-outs, 1,831 of them to transport pregnant women to health centres. Roger reckons that in that time the Novus machine will have saved 1,000 lives.
“Imagine,” he told Novus Rotary “that there was a car crash outside our meeting place (the Elizabeth Park centre in Thurmaston) and that we rushed out and did CPR and saved the lives of two people.
“Imagine,” he said, “how great we would feel about that.”
“Now, what you have done is saved 1,000 lives.”
After so many life-saving missions over terribly-tough terrain, the e-Ranger now needs repairs and maintenance costing about £650.
As several members said after Roger’s presentation: “Roger’s passion is well-placed. We really must contribute, so that the live-saving work of our e-Ranger can continue.”
Last edited: 23:15 on Thursday, 14/09/2023
