When Subani Pradhan received a new stove February 2016, she looked at the stove with skepticism. She questioned whether she could cook her family recipes on this stove, and whether the foods would have the same rich, smoky flavors her husband liked so much. Her traditional stove, known as a mudstove, was the same type her mother used and the same type used throughout her community, and she wasn’t convinced this new one would satisfy her needs.
How do we ensure that vaccines are protected at the last mile?
The viability of a vaccine is threatened without proper storage at the last mile of its supply chain. Vaccines are sensitive, and must be kept at a temperature of between 2 °C and 8 °C. A recent WHO & UNICEF joint statement found that 56% of cold chain equipment in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is poorly functioning or non-functional. This means vaccines are produced, but at the last mile, they fail to reach babies and children, or worse, children receive impotent vaccines, leaving them unknowingly unprotected and exposed to illness.
This post is based on a real email conversation, but the numbers here have been changed. We believe this is an important conversation, and that the entire non-profit sector — as well as funders — might benefit from considering factors like the ones discussed below. Enjoy!
JESSE: As a data scientist, I sometimes struggle to strike a balance between stating our results with pure scientific rigor and communicating our impact in a way that’s easy to understand. The way we measure adoption, we’d need to be looking at ≥317 households in this cohort to be able to justify the decimal place in saying 91.1% for adoption.
Many times at Nexleaf, we’re asked if we focus on climate change, hardware design, or grassroots implementation. Our answer is we do all of this and more. The scope of our work is wide, and that’s because complex problems – like climate change or global health – require multi-dimensional solutions.
Our flagship technologies, StoveTrace and ColdTrace, are built for different sectors, but they serve a similar purpose. That’s because, while immunization and clean cooking seem so distinct from each other, the poorest 3 billion still lack access to these basic, yet life-saving, necessities. The technologies we develop gather data to reveal problems at the last mile, and with that data, we identify gaps in infrastructure, supply chains, and knowledge.