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Things Go Better as Coke Supply Chain Delivers Medicine to Remote African Villages

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Women in rural areas of the developing world often have to walk all day to get to a health clinic to retrieve the oral rehydration packets needed to treat their children's diarrhea, a leading killer for those under the age of five.

When they arrive, however, the medicine is often gone. The solution lies in getting the packets closer to outlying villages, a logistical challenge in distributing a world renowned soft drink. "You will find Coca-Cola in any village at any time in the course of the year, but you'll not find medicines. What’s the difference? There's something to be learned there," says Zambian Minister of Health Joseph Kasonde.

Claire Ward's indie documentary —The Cola Road—follows that learning curve as an innovative nonprofit piggybacks on the Coca-Cola distribution network in Zambia to distribute oral rehyrdration packets. A former editor at Maclean's, Ward made the film for her master's project in journalism at New York University, funding it largely through crowdsourced financing.


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The film highlights the work of Simon and Jane Berry, who head ColaLife, as they probe whether a plastic kit containing zinc and the salts used to combat dehydration in stricken babies and toddlers would win acceptance by the country's Coca-Cola bottler, South African Breweries, as well as wholesalers, small rural shopkeepers and critically the parents of sick children living in far-flung provinces.

The kit, sold for a dollar (5000 kwacha), fits snugly into the neck of the Coke bottles slotted into the familiar vermillion, hard-plastic crates and delivered by donkey, oxcart, bicycle as well as the familiar trucks and buses. ("Think Outside the Box and Inside the Crate," as the film's promo poster entreats.)

Tiny village shops, always stocked with Coke, have now started to receive oral rehydration Kit Yamoyos (kits of life)—and, no, Coke itself is not a particularly good rehydration fluid, despite the lore. Thousands of the kits have been sold already in Zambian rural districts and the Ministry of Health, the film points out, now has plans to use the same supplier network to distribute other types of medicine. The income for the shopkeepers provides an incentive to keep the kits on the shelves.

Simon Berry has contemplated using the Coke supplier network to distribute medicines for more than 20 years and now the idea is catching on. Segway developer and serial inventor Dean Kamen remarks in the April 29 issue of Fortune that he convinced Coca-Cola to become his partner in distributing Slingshot, a still that uses minimal energy to clean water. It could become an ideal complement to a Kit Yamoyo that requires a clean water supply to bring a sick baby back to health.

Here's a trailer for the film and a video that contains some footage from the documentary:

Image Sources: Simon Berry/ColaLife; pi Global (video)

Gary Stix, Scientific American's neuroscience and psychology editor, commissions, edits and reports on emerging advances and technologies that have propelled brain science to the forefront of the biological sciences. Developments chronicled in dozens of cover stories, feature articles and news stories, document groundbreaking neuroimaging techniques that reveal what happens in the brain while you are immersed in thought; the arrival of brain implants that alleviate mood disorders like depression; lab-made brains; psychological resilience; meditation; the intricacies of sleep; the new era for psychedelic drugs and artificial intelligence and growing insights leading to an understanding of our conscious selves. Before taking over the neuroscience beat, Stix, as Scientific American's special projects editor, oversaw the magazine's annual single-topic special issues, conceiving of and producing issues on Einstein, Darwin, climate change, nanotechnology and the nature of time. The issue he edited on time won a National Magazine Award. Besides mind and brain coverage, Stix has edited or written cover stories on Wall Street quants, building the world's tallest building, Olympic training methods, molecular electronics, what makes us human and the things you should and should not eat. Stix started a monthly column, Working Knowledge, that gave the reader a peek at the design and function of common technologies, from polygraph machines to Velcro. It eventually became the magazine's Graphic Science column. He also initiated a column on patents and intellectual property and another on the genesis of the ingenious ideas underlying new technologies in fields like electronics and biotechnology. Stix is the author with his wife, Miriam Lacob, of a technology primer called Who Gives a Gigabyte: A Survival Guide to the Technologically Perplexed (John Wiley & Sons, 1999).

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