Thousands of discarded shipping containers clog up ports around the globe because it is too expensive for companies to send them back. The tough, steel boxes are a standard size designed to travel on ships and trucks everywhere.
Former journalist turned global health advocate Laurie Garrett, a fellow at New York’s Council on Foreign Relations, saw a recycling opportunity. Around two years ago she came up with the idea of converting the containers into mobile medical centres that could be mass-produced cheaply and transported around the world.
Installed in towns and villages the world over, Doc-in-a-Boxes could provide basic but pressing health services such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria screening, doling out drugs and routine childhood vaccinations. This would free-up hospitals to focus on other care.
A shipping container, once retrofitted for use as a health clinic, is a durable, standardized, adaptable, secure structure with significant potential for replication and consistent care services. The interior of an industrial shipping container can be renovated to allow space for a small consultation room, a small laboratory, an office for staff, and storage and inventory space. Modified for ventilation, light, and utility connections, a container clinic provides a personalized, local-level venue for community members to seek treatment services or preventive health education.
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