Life at the Last Mile

Here is a great video that shows life at the last mile in Mozambique.

http://villagereach.net/photos-videos/video-gallery/

Introduction

Summer Intership

I had an internship this summer at a company called VillageReach here in Seattle, Wa. The company specializes in last mile delivery of health care vaccines to rural health clinics in Northern Mozambique. They have also set up a LP Gas system that keeps the vaccines at the right temperatures and they have found a market to sell the gas to residential customers which is improving the air quality (they were burning charcoal previously). By selling the LP Gas to residential customers the company has reduced the countries upper respiratory problems and created a social business

I was brought on to look at developing a transportation system that can provide consistent reliable delivery of health care products to rural areas. There is an obvious problem that has been documented in most world reports with the inconsistency of the deliveries of vaccines. Currently the big logistics companies provide the one time delivery of the product to a regional distribution center or provincial capital though the costs are higher then most NGO's (Non-profits) can afford.

We wanted to create a transportation system or possible partner with a large company to provide jobs to local people to do these delivery's and look at ways for them to take ownership of the program in the future.

So of the areas I looked into were:

How are vaccines currently being delivered to rural Africa?

What are the challenges of delivering health care to rural Africa?

Why are the vaccines not being delivered on a consistent basis?

Is there a need to provide this service?

After 4-5 months of research we found that transport is one of the number one problems in Africa and it is overlooked to often.

For additional info on transport check out these sites:

http://www.worldbank.org/

http://www.jsi.com/JSIInternet/

http://www.psi.org/

Intro

I spent the summer developing transport solutions in the developing countries. From health care to corporations there is much work to be done and what is the most sustainable way to help these countries grow. I hope to explore these topics and share that experience with you.