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Medicine kit package helps ColaLife save lives in Zambia

Wedge-shaped anti-diarrhea Kit Yamoyo package ‘piggybacks’ in unused space within CocaCola crates to take advantage of the beverage giant’s global distribution system.

ColaLife crate
ColaLife crate

The 1960s-era Coca-Cola advertising slogan, “Things go better with Coke,” never referred to anti-diarrhea kits (ADKs), but that’s precisely what crates of the beverages are carrying for ColaLife in an innovative distribution trial in Africa.

At its Web site, which offers a video demonstration of the Kit Yamoyo package, ColaLife explains, “ColaLife is working in developing countries to bring Coca-Cola, its bottlers and others together to save children’s lives by opening the distribution channels which Coca-Cola uses, to enable ‘social products’ such as oral rehydration salts and zinc supplements to use similar routes. ColaLife started as an online ‘movement’ in April 2008, and became an independent U.K. charity in 2011. “

ColaLife is an independent nonprofit organization run and staffed by volunteers. The organization notes, “You can buy a Coca-Cola virtually anywhere in developing countries but in these same places, one in nine children die before their 5th birthday from simple preventable causes like dehydration from diarrhea. That’s more than 16 times the average for developed regions (1 in 152).

“We have more than 10,000 online supporters and these have given us the power to engage Coca-Cola, UNICEF, and other key stakeholders. We are now running a locally determined adaptation of the ColaLife concept, as our first trial, in Zambia—The ColaLife Operational Trial Zambia (COTZ).”

The COTZ trial involves the AidPod anti-diarrhea kit. If the trial is successful, it could be used globally for other medical kits. ColaLife worked with pi global to create a robust container to carry simple medicines. It had to be small enough to only occupy the unused space between Coca-Cola bottles in crates, yet large enough to fit a large enough dose of the essential medicines. They also had to ensure that they kept to strict medical guidelines set by the Pharmaceutical Regulatory Authority of Zambia.

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