A battery-operated container that helps vaccines to be transported in safe and effective condition to remote areas has won a huge grant from Canada.

The thermoelectric container has the potential to provide an alternative to replace Styrofoam and plastic boxes with ice packs that are currently used to transport vaccines in the near future. In most developing economies in Asia and Africa, the new product can offer a practical option, say the developers.

The innovation comes from a joint collaborative effort between the Hyderabad-based Sathguru Management Consultants and the North Carolina based RTI International. It has received a grant of 100,000 Canadian dollars from the Grand Challenges Canada, funded by the Canadian Government to support innovations in health.

Sathguru has been recognized among 59 peer-reviewed grantees from low and middle income countries in Round 4 of the Stars in Global Health programme.

Sathguru’s program lead Pushpa Vijayaraghavan and Rama Venkatasubramanian, Director of RTI’s, Centre for Solid State Energetics believe that their solution will empower health workers with a product that can provide active cooling in the WHO mandated norm for a period of 24 to 48 hours.

While RTI will develop field ready prototypes of the solution, Sathguru will lead the effort in field validation and commercialization.

>Somasekhar.m@thehindu.co.in