Caroline Ash
Several sub-Saharan countries have been prioritized by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) for HIV elimination. This will require 90% treatment coverage by the end of 2030, but poor transport infrastructure means incomplete access to medication in some countries. Palk
et al. developed a geospatial model for understanding the difficulties of reaching health care facilities in Malawi, a country severely affected by HIV. They mapped health care facilities with the density of HIV prevalence and quantified the difficulty of travel across Malawi s landscape by a friction surface raster map. If bicycles are used, then the catchment size for a health care facility is substantially larger than if people walk, and the required 90% treatment coverage for elimination becomes achievable. Bicycles are already used as “ambulances” in rural areas, but Malawi s bicycle fleet is small and in poor repair. One straightforward route for beating HIV (and many other