Cooling Kenya

Nairobi-based photographer Joost Bastmeijer visited two informal settlements in the capital of Nairobi: Korogocho and Dandora. In these neighborhoods, he took photos in both the Mkunga Maternity and Nursing Home (pictured below) and the Mwangaza Ulio na Tumaini (pictured above), a facility that is owned by the Christian Health Association of Kenya. Both facilities use top loader chest freezers to store their vaccines and other cold chain medical equipment, as can be seen on the photos in this reportage gallery.

The chest freezer of the Tumaini Clinic (r) can only be opened twice a day, to ensure that it doesn’t lose coolness. During the day, vaccines are kept in a small cooler box.

The Mkunga Clinic (pictured above) in informal settlement Dandora has a patient load of 2,300 people per month. It is nurse-led and privately owned. The walls of the clinic are covered with information pamphlets and posters. One of them shows how to take care of the pictured vaccine freezer.

Dandora, home to the aforementioned Mkunga Clinic, is best known for the largest solid waste dumpsite of Nairobi, which can also be seen from the Korogocho-based Tumaini Clinic. The dumpsite has many significant health effects on the population of Dandora and neighbouring Korogocho settlements – some people even live in houses that border the dumpsite itself. Even though Korogocho is just 1.5 square kilometres big, the area houses one of the largest informal settlements or ‘slums’ of the Kenyan capital. It is estimated that 150.000 to 200.000 people are living in the area.

Cooling Tanzania

In Tanzania, home to Tanga Fresh milk and Serengeti beers, cooling is needed not only to cool drinks, but also to safely store vaccines and medicines that would otherwise be worthless. In the small town of Sumve, and old refrigerator in a local pub cools its beers and cola bottles only when the power grid is actually providing electricity. Because of the unreliable source of power, the nearby Sumve Hospital (serving almost one hundred thousand people living in 24 surrounding villages) has found a more sustainable and reliable solution: their fridges are connected to solar panels on top of the hospital.