In the slick surroundings of the Saïd Business School in Oxford, where earnest academics last week mixed with West Coast US activists sipping environmentally friendly bottled water, Andrea and Barry Coleman looked a little out of place.

Over 15 years, the two British motorcycle enthusiasts have painstakingly built an organisation called Riders for Health, creating a logistics network to distribute medicines to remote parts of the developing world despite widespread indifference and suspicion from conventional donors and charities alike.