Project Overview

Zion Clinic is a primarily volunteer-run medical clinic in Muturu Village in rural eastern Uganda, and serves thousands of people in remote villages and communities in the surrounding areas. The clinic offers vital basic healthcare, maternity care, malaria treatment, specialist support for children with albinism, a wide range of medical testing and more.

Patients at Zion Clinic pay a cost-share if they are able to, however most struggle to meet basic everyday needs. Due to this, the majority of funds for the medical care offered is sourced from donations and local community projects.

There was no access to immunisation for 3200 children under the age of 15 in the area, and local people, including pregnant women, were faced with a 12km walk along rough, steep terrain to reach the nearest vaccination centre.

The Dulas team was approached by volunteers at Zion Clinic, who had been fundraising to purchase a vaccine refrigerator for the local community. After speaking to the team at Zion Clinic, Dulas made the decision to donate a VC150SDD refrigerator to Zion Clinic free of charge, through its charitable fund. Dulas also offered support to ensure that the fridge made its way through the strict Ugandan customs policy safely and efficiently, with all the relevant documentation included.

Impact

Thanks to Dulas’s work with Zion Clinic Uganda, the medical centre is now able to offer a wide range of immunisation services to children and adults in the community. The impact of this cannot be understated, and has been both life-changing and life-saving for many people in the area.

Only three weeks after the arrival of the Dulas fridge at the medical clinic, the clinic was accredited by the local health board and the first vaccinations were rolled out to the community. Now, Zion Clinic is able to vaccinate children and adults against polio, diphtheria, and tetanus, as well as offering vitamin A and mebendazole injections for children.

The combined fridge freezer model also means that the team at Zion Clinic can conduct outreach work in the community, delivering temperature-controlled medicines and vaccinations to those who wouldn’t be able to make it to the clinic themselves.

A trusted solution for outreach vaccination programmes

The WHO PQS-accredited VC150SDD is the perfect solution for health centres needing to undertake outreach activities. As well as the ability to freeze 20x 0.6 litre water packs for outreach work in the field, it has a large vaccine storage capacity of 102 litres.

The VC150SDD features Freeze-Free® technology, ensuring that vaccines stored in the refrigerator are never exposed to harmful freezing temperatures. It also has advanced autonomy and holdover rates, which means that it can maintain vaccines at a safe temperature for up to 4 days. Each refrigerator is integrated with ICE3, a remote temperature monitoring device which enables users to accurately monitor the temperature of their refrigerators from a phone or computer anywhere in the world. The ICE3 technology sends an alert via SMS or email to cold chain technicians should the temperature deviate outside the specified range, ensuring that vaccines are kept safe and effective at all times.

Challenges and solutions

The biggest challenge by far for the project was transporting the refrigerator safely to Muturu village. Mount Elgon is a particularly remote area, and roads and infrastructure are poor with the nearest hospital based two hours away.

For locals, the most common mode of transport is on foot, or by motorbike and scooter for longer distances, as the roads and paths in this area are unsuitable for larger vehicles.

Transporting a 200kg fridge can be a challenge even in more developed areas, but the team and local community surrounding Zion Clinic pulled together to transport this equipment and begin the necessary lifesaving work the fridge would enable.

From the airport, the refrigerator was driven five hours to the nearest village, before using two trucks to navigate as far as possible along steep mountain terrain. Once the trucks could go no further, a group of villagers carried the equipment on foot the last 1.5km to Zion Clinic.

Only a few weeks after the delivery of the refrigerator, Zion Clinic were able to start their new vaccination programme, giving adults, children, and pregnant women in the community access to the immunisations they need.