Misstropolis

Friday, October 30, 2009

Containers to Clinics Launch Event at the ICA

by Misstropolis Special

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Celebrating the launch of their pilot health clinic in the Dominican Republic, Containers to Clinics is throwing a party at a very intriguing venue, Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. The ICA has always been concerned with the relationship between design and functionality and how that relationship manifests in art and industry.

Containers to Clinics Launch Event and Clinic Display taking place on Monday November 16 from 6:30 to 9:30pm will be a rare opportunity to see design, functionality and compassion working together in a single exhibit.

A sketch of the pilot clinic which will be on display at the ICA.

Containers to Clinics was started because of some devastating statistics. Nine million children – 99% of whom live in the developing world - die from illnesses like malaria, diarrhea, measles and pneumonia every year; and more than 500,000 women die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth each year.  All of those are preventable or treatable diseases through basic and inexpensive health care.

C2C retrofits portable shipping containers into health clinics with high-quality equipment, medicines, and medical staff. The clinics are transported to underserved areas of the developing world to administer primary healthcare to women and children. C2C’s clinics are designed with diagnostic, lighting, and climate-control technologies appropriate for low-resource settings and reflect local cultural traditions and health education needs. By repurposing shipping containers, C2C exports access to better health around the world and closes the gap between available treatments and the women and children who
desperately need them.

Some clinic structures are brick-and-mortar facilities; others provide mobile services to isolated villages. The container model seeks to draw from the best practices of all existing clinic interventions.

Men work on the interior of the container which will soon be a full service clinic.

Once retrofitted for use as a health clinic, a shipping container is a transportable, durable, adaptive, and secure structure with high potential for replication and consistent care services. The interior of an industrial shipping container can be renovated to allow space for a small consultation room, a small laboratory, an office for staff, and storage and inventory space. Modified for ventilation, light, and utility connections, a container clinic provides a personalized, local-level venue for community members to seek treatment services or preventive health education.

The pilot clinic will be shipped to the Dominican Republic in early 2010 and is scheduled to arrive in country, pass customs, and be operational in the target community by March.

The C2C clinic is currently being fabricated in Rhode Island by a team of design-builders from Stack Design Build a company which has used shipping containers for green projects in the past. The C2C clinic will be on display from Saturday, November 14th through Tuesday, November 17th and then will be moved down the street to Build Boston at the Seaport World Trade Center.

The outside of the container under construction in Rhode Island.

The facility is made from two 8’ x 20’ recycled shipping containers. The first of these will house two exam and consultation spaces in which women, infants, and children will receive preventative and primary health care services from local doctors in the Dominican Republic. The second will be comprised of the pharmacy and laboratory spaces. In short, you will see a fully functional health clinic built into two boxes of recycled corrugated metal and ready for shipment to rural communities around the world.

The ICA Boston
100 Northern Avenue
Boston, MA
http://www.icaboston.org

Containers 2 Clinics
P.O. Box 446
Dover, MA 02030
781.435.1080