from The Jerusalem Post:

Jewish NGO helps Uganda with Polio vaccinations

More than 65,000 kids have received vaccinations over the past three months thanks to Jewish Heart for Africa’s solar-powered refrigerators, Rachel Ishofsky, JHA’s associate executive director, told The Jerusalem Post by phone from Uganda Wednesday night.

In August 2009, Uganda was declared Polio-free, but in September 2010, the World Health Organization confirmed two new cases. As a result, the Ugandan government decided to vaccinate 2 million children under the age of five.

However, the Ugandan Health Ministry needed a way to refrigerate the vaccines somewhere along the way between the capital and the door-to-door vaccination route in some of the rural areas, Ishofsky said. Aware of JHA’s success in providing solar-powered refrigerators to rural health clinics not far from the two cases, district health offices reached out to local JHA staffer Dr. Samson Wamani.

JHA uses Israeli solar technologies in rural medical facilities to provide light for nighttime medical care, and to power 50- 75-liter solar-powered refrigerators.