The presented containers are protected by worldwide patents

The delivery of the essential clinical services to the scattered rural populations - often the poorest - is a difficult objective for most of the developing countries.

The ideal solution is to develop in each country a valuable network of fixed installations.
Unfortunately, beyond the lack of availability of qualified medical personnel, not much disposed to settle in remote areas, the high cost of construction of such installations joined to the long period of realization of a project lead to other approaches.

The utilization of mobile clinics, strongly built, well equipped, visiting regularly the communities, even the most isolated, is certainly a reliable and economic solution providing the program is well managed.

The durability of the mobile clinics, the ease of their maintenance, the rapidity of their deployment (reducing dead time) are factors contributing to reliability.

The standard mobile clinic is, as a matter of fact, a polyclinic in a 20 feet module, installed on a trailer, itself towed by a standard 4 x 4 vehicle equipped with stretchers for collecting patients locally.
The module, lighter that the original ones used by the armies for surgical interventions, applies the same principles and construction technology. It is also a single-bloc cell inserted in an independent metallic structure. The panels, all in one block, consist of two polyester sheets reinforced by fiberglass enveloping insulating foam. Internal structures distribute the strains, caused by transportation, to the shelter as a whole and allow for firm and long-lasting fixations of all equipment.

The care brought to the design and manufacturing along with the meticulous selection of materials confer to the modules the desired qualities of good thermal insulation, high resistance to impact, of lack of corrosion, of ease of repair, of durability...

The modules exist in different dimensions (6 m - 4,5 m - 4 m).

The basic equipment of such a standard clinic consists of:

• a multipurpose examination table with adequate lighting
• a medical equipment sufficient to ensure all the essential clinical services defined by the World Bank or the World Health Organization and perform minor surgery operations
• a sterilizer
• a refrigerator powered by a system of solar cells for the conservation of vaccines and drugs
• a small laboratory to perform elementary clinical analyses
• a water tank with a filtered distribution system
• an air conditioner

All this equipment is firmly fixed to panels or stored in firmly secured boxes.
A power generator is also provided in case of failure of the electricity local network.

Principles of use of mobile clinics

Standard use:
One or more qualified teams from the district hospital to which it is attached uses the mobile clinic. These teams relieve each other to guarantee an almost uninterrupted operation.

A team, managed by a doctor or a clinician, in the presence of the local medical personnel (most often a nurse) makes it possible to :

• deliver ALL the essential clinical services.
• guarantee a correct diagnosis supported, if necessary, by laboratory analysis.
• screen the severe cases to the hospital (and only those).
• treat the patients in favorable conditions (water, electricity, air conditioning, clean environment, sterilized instruments), whatever the state of the local facilities could be.
• proceed to an adequate prescription and to supply the corresponding drugs.
• extend, partly, the hospital services to the visited areas.

Continuous training and officering of the local personnel are automatically ensured as a reliable collection of basic health information.

Note

The principle of decentralization of the health services is gaining ground in all developing countries, the district exerting the total responsibility of the primary health care.

The mobile clinics are, in their standard utilization, logically attached to the hospital of this district.
They are able to deliver ALL the essential clinical services recommended by the World Bank or the WHO and they partially extend the hospital services to the whole district.

The mobile clinics fit automatically in the regular visiting program of medical teams made indispensable by the lack of qualified personnel in the health centers and dispensaries, where they exist.