Head north from Nairobi into central north Kenya—the Laikipia Plateau, Samburuland, the Turkana Basin or the northern Rift Valley. Drive for a hundred plus kilometers into the countryside then change to a camel for another fifty or sixty kilometers. The road becomes a track and travel difficult. The people you meet live a semi-nomadic life, herding goats, sheep and cattle. Incomes are often less than $1 US per day. Basic health care is hard to find.

Camel with refrigeration unit ready to go!

Hereour partners Community Health Africa a Poverty Solution (CHAPS) (http://www.communityhealthafrica.org/) supports existing health clinics run by Community Health Africa Trust and Nomadic Communities Trust. But CHAPS and the clinics have a challenge: How to deliver fragile vaccines and other medicines that must be kept cold to clinics miles from electrical power under rugged conditions.

To solve the problem, CHAPS decided to test a portable, solar powered refrigeration unit that could be transported by camel, 4x4 motor vehicle, bicycle and foot to reach isolated, rural communities. And they asked LUA to partner with them on this effort.

In May 2010, a field trial was held. "These fridge trials were a wonderful success," CHAPS' Donna Thorson reported. "In rainy conditions we could keep up with the power need in only half-day charging time and in full, hot sun we were generating 1 amp more per hour than the fridge was drawing."
 
The project now has a new challenge—Finding away to manufacture these successful and life changing solar refrigeration units!