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Getting vaccines where they're needed the most

VillageReach helps to deliver essential vaccines to remote areas in developing countries.

Photo: VillageReach

It is widely known that vaccines are one of the most cost-effective ways to save lives in poor countries. In some areas, in fact, living conditions are so dire that, in the words of John Beale, “if you don’t get immunized, you die.” Beale is director of strategic development for VillageReach, a Seattle-based organization set up 10 years ago to help facilitate the distribution of vaccines and medical equipment in the world’s most remote areas. “The World Health Organization and the developed world support sending shiploads of vaccines and medicines to low-income countries,” Beale explains, “but once they arrive, the job is often considered done.” At that point, local civil servants take over and the vaccines often fail to reach the villages, where most of the people live. Beale speaks of “an incredible irony” whereby the vaccines are there but rarely get to the people they are meant to reach.

VillageReach quickly discovered an important obstacle: the lack of a reliable fuel supply to provide refrigeration for vaccines and lighting for performing procedures at night and sterilizing medical supplies. “If it takes two or three hours to get your child to the health clinic, and you find the vaccines or medicines have not arrived or have gone bad or that the clinic is closed because the electricity has fallen out again, you will be discouraged from trying again,” says Beale. “We want to enable the underserved to have greater confidence in their health systems.”

So in 2002, VillageReach teamed up with a local partner in the north of Mozambique to create VidaGas, which supplies propane to power refrigerators and other medical equipment in some 260 health clinics serving about 5 million people. VidaGas also installs and maintains these propane systems. The company supplies restaurants and hotels, too, which in the past burned wood or charcoal to cook. Switching to propane not only helps reduce health problems associated with constant exposure to smoke, but contributes to reductions in deforestation and soil erosion.

In the area of northern Mozambique where VidaGas is active, the number of vaccinated children has increased 30 percent, resulting in totals far higher than the national average. VillageReach—which is also working in Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal and India—is eager to spread its model. “Our purpose is to scale by having others leverage our model, so not necessarily everything has to be done by us,” says VillageReach co-founder Craig Nakagawa. “Muhammad Yunus didn’t start all those microcredit organizations around the world; he started a model that worked and others copied the model. We hope it works like that with what we do.”