As the fight against the deadly Ebola virus continues, the answer to fighting the disease might be in the inside of a shipping container.
It’s been introduced as “The Future of Mobile Medicine” – The Emergency Smart Pod.
Inside this recycled forty foot container is a modular eight bed medical unit – this design has just won a preliminary grant of $850,000 from the U. S. Agency for International Development.
Each pod would be a self-contained unit, outfitted with heat and air conditioning, HEPA filtration, sinks, latrines and a wireless internet connection.
The ability to transport this medical unit is one of the major bonuses. It can literally be dropped into any location (by helicopter) within a couple of weeks. It is being billed as being the future of modern, transportable medicine, a self contained, fully powered tent free alternative. The Emergency Smart Pod can not only respond to epidemics, it can also act as an operating room and maternity ward – anywhere in the world.
Shipping containers are in abundance in the United States. With places like China exporting the majority of the cargo to the U.S. in these steel boxes and the U.S. sending a lot less of the containers back, recycling these containers makes a lot of sense. At a figure of approx USD3500 – USD4000 for these durable, engineering marvels – tailor made to hold heavy loads and take a constant battering.
