Harvey Rubin on Harnessing Cell Tower Power into the Pharmaceutical Cold Chain

In this interview Harvey Rubin, Director of Strategic Threat Analysis and Response at the University of Pennsylvania, speaks to Cold Chain IQ about utilising surplus energy from off-grid cell towers to power pharmaceutical cold chains in remote parts of the world. Cold Chain IQ: Could you give us a brief background about the aims of Energize the Chain?

H Rubin: Well, we now call ourselves Energize the Chain and this was a recognition of a tremendous problem that’s been going on for quite some time. The overall problem is: how do you get vaccines and other medically related things to very remote parts of the world which does not have the appropriate power supply to keep things cold?

Vaccines need to be kept between two and eight degrees Celsius, or else they lose their activity and if they freeze and thaw then they lose activity. If they get above eight degrees for any prolonged period of time vaccines lose their activity. And so the question is: how do you keep these vaccines cold? And the reason that is so important is because vaccine-preventable death is an enormous problem.

There are about 2.5 million kids under the age of five who die of vaccine-preventable deaths. Maybe the most, the largest number is probably measles, which is almost up to 800,000 children; pneumococcal disease; Rotavirus disease; diarrhoeal diseases; pertussis, whooping cough; tetanus; polio; all of these diseases can be prevented with vaccines. But if the vaccines aren’t kept at the right temperature, then a child will get a vaccine thinking that he is protected and, low and behold, not protected.

The need to keep vaccines cold is absolutely an enormous one. And vaccinations themselves, if you look at the overall problem and the overall efficacy of vaccines; if you do vaccinate a child there is a lot of data that says, it’s not just keeping that child from having pneumococcal disease or measles or polio, but that child then performs better in school. They join the workforce; they are productive members of society, so the overall impact of vaccinating children appropriately is a multi-billion dollar and is a huge societal and economic benefit. And so we thought, how do you solve this problem? And that is what led to Energise the Chain.

Cold Chain IQ: What is your major focus and objective at the moment?

H Rubin: That is a great question. Our objective is to implement our strategy to get vaccines to remote parts of the world. And how do we do that? Well, there is this common thought that’s there’s no energy out there in the remote parts of the world; there’s no electrical grid; it takes a lot of diesel power; it takes, maybe, solar or wind power, but guess what? Just reach into your pocket and pull out your cell phone. How do you think that cell phone is working? That cell phone is connected into a cell tower and anybody who’s travelled all over the world will recognise that just about every place on this globe is under the coverage of a cell phone.

There are more cell phones it is said, than toilet bowls in the world. There are more cell phones than tooth brushes. And cell phones work with relationship to a local cell tower; by 2015 the entire globe, it is predicted, will be covered by cell phones. Cell towers have surplus energy, so in fact, everywhere locally there are, there are facilities with surplus power. Not a whole lot, but certainly enough to power a refrigeration unit. And so our strategy, our mission then is to figure out the infrastructure and the actual minor engineering things you have to overcome to literally plug in vaccine storage refrigerators into the cell tower. Or even ice-making machines that can then be transferred to the local ministry of health. So our whole mission now is to use this surplus power at these cell towers, which are everywhere in the world, to harness that into the Cold Chain. So, plug a refrigerator into the cell tower or plug a refrigeration system, like an ice-making unit into the cell tower. And guess what? That solves the problem.

Cold Chain IQ: But what is the initiative for the grid networks?

H Rubin: Again, I maybe too optimistic because it seems like it’s a solved problem, but you are right, there are some hurdles. And so here’s some incentives. Ministries of health pay a lot of money to power their refrigerators now using diesel fuel. So, it’s estimated that about 12% of a ministry’s of health budget, outputs over a $1 million a year, is spent on diesel fuel. If there was an alternative source of energy that could be more inexpensive it would be to the benefit of the ministries of health.

On the other hand cell towers spend about 75% of their operating expenses on energy; getting their towers energised. And mind you this is the real, I think, insight that we had, is that this is now a private sector initiative that the private sector, the cell tower operators, have an enormous incentive to keep the energy on. They spend a lot of money on energy, so if they could charge even a small amount to supply energy for the vaccines they would make a little bit of money. The ministries of health would save a lot of money and of course, the kids win. So everybody wins.

So the incentive for the ministries of health is to save money on their diesel costs and the incentive for the cell tower operators is to recoup some of their investment in energy. And, of course, the incentive for the families are to have vaccinated and protected kids. So, I think when you look at it, it’s everybody wins with this solution.

Cold Chain IQ: How exactly is the cell phone tower’s power harnessed?

H Rubin: Right now cell towers are, for the most part operated off the national grid. When the national grid is not reliable or it goes down there’s an immediate backup with diesel and then that can be stored in batteries. So the harnessing of the energy, the surplus energy to cell tower can be in a number of ways.

First, in Zimbabwe where we have a pilot going, you can actually have a direct connection between the cell tower and the refrigerators, just literally plugging it in. Alternatively you could use the energy there at the cell tower to power up ice-making equipment. A study we did in Kenya, with the collaboration from the Gates’ Foundation, suggested that in certain areas that might be a better solution because then you can distribute the ice to the various ministries of health. So the direct electrical power harnessed is through a simple cable, a wire. And then how we actually distribute that in terms of vaccines will be, will flow to the ministry of health. But this is not rocket science, the engineering is essentially done. It’s just a matter of implementing it now.

Cold Chain IQ: So, it’s a really exciting time for you at the moment. Has there been any resistance or do you foresee any obstacles in implementation? How do you plan to overcome them?

H Rubin: So, what I’ve learned is that with a simple technical solution and an obvious medical need I thought this problem was solved. But it turns out as you delve deeper into the whole implementation you are exactly right, nothing is so simple. I would not say that they are hurdles, but we have to figure out the business model to make sure that nobody loses money. We also have to figure out how to build on the tremendously important work that the World Health Organisation and UNICEF has already done in establishing the Cold Chain.

We certainly do not want to displace a successful system; we want to build on it and implement a more innovative solution. So, making sure we do nto actually displace success we have to be very careful and build on what’s there. And so the other, the last thing and one thing that everybody wants to be sure is that this is a sustainable solution. And how do we convince the ministries of health that the cell towers are in it for the long haul? How do we convince the cell tower folks that the ministry of health is in it for the long haul? So these are human relations’ issues and management issues that I think we’ve been very conscious of that. Our partners have just been wonderful and being totally and upfront about what they see the issues are. And I think all of these are solvable; so these are not insolvable problems. But you are right, these are the things that we have to be very conscious of. Cold Chain IQ: Looking to the future, what other applications and possibilities do you see with this project? It has got a lot of potential.

H Rubin: Yes, we are very excited about this. The next set of steps are to roll this out in Zimbabwe and Kenya, India, we would love to expand our teams. When I have given this talk people from all over the world come and say, we need this in Indonesia; we need this in China; we need this in the Philippines; we need this in South America. So, we would love to expand our team to include every place where this this solution is needed. So, the next step is to stay focused on the solution.

When I was talking to the folks at UNICEF they said, look, there are other things aside from vaccines; there are diagnostic tools that we need to keep cold; we need to build that in. There are maternal foetal diagnostic tests that we want to get out into the, into the world; we need to keep those cold. And so, I think, if we can, if we can transform some of the surplus energy into the health sector and find a way to make a successful business model where everybody wins, that’s a, that is our goal. And, you know, this is, this will save millions of lives with a tremendous economic and political and social impact.

You just have to read what a vaccinated kid can do compared to an unvaccinated kid. And then from an academic point of view we would love to document the impact. What is the overall health impact of this new solution? And we would love to get that data to be able to show, in fact, that this idea, this innovative idea has had real, real health, economic, social impact. And anybody who wants to join us, let us know.

Have Your Say Rate this feature and give us your feedback in the comments section below Interview conducted by Andrea Charles.

IQPC

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