Clinic-in-a-box (CiB) is an innovative solution to providing facilities with long-term health care to impoverished regions of South Africa and beyond. Manufactured in South Africa, it only takes four to six weeks for a CiB to turn up, and as promised, shipping is free.

The inexpensive design adapts the storage capacity of a freight container to fold out and erect a clinic whose size and shape is determined by the consumer’s needs.

The container that holds all of the equipment is recycled from old freight carriers. It is prefabricated before shipping, and by the time it reaches its destination it will only take four days until the completed product emerges, equipped with a unique selection of technology aimed at providing exactly what the region requires.

The reason clinic-in-a-box is so ingenious is not only because of its mobility but also due to its application to the health system in rural parts of Africa.

They will help to bring sustainable healthcare to those who lack the means to do so, seeing as the upkeep of the clinic can be met by a small community. So once a clinic has been established, it relies on the people to properly maintain it.

The price of visiting one of these clinics is $10-$15 (R77-R96) which is still not cheap enough for most impoverished Africans. However, the cost is significantly lower than state health care, which only covers about 20 percent in South Africa, the home of CiBs.

This inequality of health provisions brings about the issues of affordable and accessible health care that South Africa faces today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGHnr4DMwU8

In South Africa alone there is only one doctor per 4,000 people; this is because nearly 73 percent of the 165,000 qualified health practitioners work in the private sector, which is rather expensive for the 80 percent of people who live in areas where affordable healthcare is hard to come by.

By distributing more health centers in these containers, healthcare will quickly become easily obtainable and the price will become much more fixed.

In comparison to the $3,179 (R45,000) one pays to give birth in a South African hospital, a similar procedure curated in a clinic-in-a-box costs significantly less. This is because the price of building a hospital ($1.05 billion or R 1.5 billion) dwarfs the price of constructing a small clinic ($53,512 or R 757,443) capable of serving a wide variety of ailments–not to mention it only takes a few days to build the clinic and months to place a hospital.

The Clinic-in-a-Box holds promise for the thousands in rural parts of South Africa that healthcare will one day be accessible to the majority of people and not just to those who can afford it.

Because of this, it won an award in the SA Innovation Awards of 2015. The standard model starts at $50,000, but more selections are available and offer different options. However, all come with running water, air conditioning and a toilet—great luxuries for comfort-ability in areas that struggle day-to-day.

– Emilio Rivera

Sources: South Africa, Bus-Ex, SA Private Hospitals, PFSCM 1, PFSCM 2
Photo: Flickr