Sterile Box Is Solar-Powered To Make Surgeries Safer In Remote Areas

When Joseph Lister figured out that many people died in hospitals back in his day because of poor hygiene standards and the lack of sterilization, his revamped best practices at hospitals and on the surgery tables have helped save countless lives since. In other words, whenever one intends to perform a surgery, just make sure that the area around as well as tools used are sterilized – otherwise the patient might just catch a nasty virus from the surgery opening and end up for the worse. Developing countries or remote that require emergency operations might not have such facilities, which is why the idea of a solar-powered Sterile Box makes perfect sense.

Public policy professor Douglas Schuler at Rice University, alongside his bunch of graduate students, have managed to figure out a method of ensuring that out of reach areas will still have a method to sterilize the surgical instruments even when there is no electricity supply in the vicinity, and this is attributed to the solar-powered Sterile Box.

The Sterile Box has been built into a standard 20-foot steel shipping container, where it boasts of everything required to prepare surgical instruments for safe reuse, including a water system for decontamination and a solar-powered autoclave for steam sterilization. This self-powered, drop-in system has the ability to be used anywhere, anytime.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Green, Medical
Tags: solar power