Brisbane – Four engineering students from the University of Queensland have developed a mobile vaccine storage system for rural communities in Cambodia.
The new vaccine storage unit (VSU) will allow vaccines to be safely stored and transported to the Kandal province of Cambodia, where healthcare standards are considerably poor.
According to designer and team spokesperson Mitch Kelly, the implementation of the VSU will help promote sustainable development in Cambodia, with plans for the villagers to actively participate in the building and maintenance of the units.
“Although our customers are the people who are actually going to be using the vans or trucks…the (VSU) is for the Cambodian villages to improve their healthcare and their way of life,” he said.
The system, designed by Mitch Kelly, Hendry Kurniawan, Dan Manche` and Charles Chak, involves mounting a commercial fridge unit inside an off -road vehicle capable of negotiating rural terrain.
The unit is then powered by a customised energy source, such as inbuilt solar panels or a modified vehicle battery, which will provide long term storage capability.
Not only will the system be able to consistently store vaccines between the necessary two to eight degrees Celsius but it will also provide the Resource Development International Cambodia (RDIC) organisation the means to transport vaccines for chicken pox, typhoid and malaria to remote regions of Cambodia.
At the moment healthcare workers use eskies and icepacks to transport vaccines, which are unable to maintain a consistently cool temperature and are inadequate over long distances.
According to the engineering team, the new VSU will help ensure the safe storage of vaccines in an area of Cambodia where less than 1% of the province has grid electricity.
However the mounting and power source for the new VSU is still in development, as the engineering team investigate the suitability of their proposed design.
“The cost is definitely an element but because we are using (a commercial fridge) and not designing it from scratch this will help keep costs down,” Mr Kelly said.
“Our customer is the RDIC; we are designing it for them according to their needs.”
The final design for the VSU will be unveiled later this year.