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Liz writes in with information about an innovative new project to convert surplus shipping containers into medical clinics for people in the developing world. As it turns out, shipping containers are a pretty useful even if they aren't shipping stuff around.
A shipping container, once retrofitted for use as a health clinic, is a durable, standardized, adaptable, secure structure with significant potential for replication and consistency in care. 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.
In many places, shipping containers are used as stores, cellular based phone access points and more. Once they have delivered their goodies, sometimes they can have a long and useful life by staying in place.
The Container Clinic can be organized as a stand-alone structure, or to complement and improve services and capacity adjacent to an existing structure - health facility, community center, school, or church. The container clinic functions as a gathering place for community members providing robust health education programming to address a multiplicity of community health concerns including prevention of disease transmission, sexual health, gender relations, women's health, antenatal care and eldercare.
By providing a shelter for the patients, medical staff and equipment Containers 2 Clincs hopes to make a dent in the pressing needs of those less fortunate. Their Facebook group has some more information and community around the project.
What is the most amazing thing you have seen done with a shipping container? Join us in the comments and add your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.
Hi everibody,
I'm living in Nouméa in new caledonia and 2 years ago the territorial hospital has been extended by a system similar.90 beds were added by this "operation"
Thÿ
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Here in Japan shipping container modification is actually an active business. You see them used as mobile offices sometimes, but more often the modifications are not immediately apparent or apparent at all to the naked eye. I'd say the most common use I know of is Karaoke rooms, if you've ever seen a large karaoke building going up (or being torn down) you'll notice they stack the containers and then put temporary walls around the outside. I guess they containers are relatively sound proof. They are also often modified and placed inside buildings during construction to create shelter rooms. I've also seen rental storage facilities that used an automated elevator like system to bring down your container from a tower of containers in slots, sort of like those parking garages where you put your car on a rack and an elevator takes it up and stores it in a compartment in a high-rise like building, only much bigger and slower. The other use that immediately comes to mind I have seen in America too; portable offices that are placed on construction sights.
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While not re-purposing a container, the BBC have quite a nice project where they have fitted a container (The Box) with a GPS tracker and have been tracking its journey around the world as means of understanding globalisation and world trade.
Some good background material on containers and a PDF of a card model so you can make your own BBC box.
See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/business/2008/the_box/default.stm
Kennedy
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Thank You..
izmir evden eve
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