Can a bottle of Coke save a child’s life?

Coca-Cola is one of the worlds’s largest companies and is certainly one of the best known global brands.

The company is good at lots of things and one thing they are extremely good at is working with their bottlers and managing the Coke distribution channel.

After all, the distinctive Coke bottles and cans can be seen in shops in all corners of the world. They certainly can get their products to the distribution outlets.

I came across a report the other day involving an inspirational person called Simon Berry.

Simon spent some time working in Zambia as an aid worker and quickly spotted that one of the major causes of death amongst children in that area was from diarrhoea. It’s a shocking statistic but in some countries, 1 in 9 children die before their 5th birthday from simple preventable causes such as dehydration from diarrhoea.

The sad thing is that there is a relatively cheap and easy cure for this life taking disease. A simple mix of oral rehydration salts and zinc supplements can provide the appropriate immediate nutritional and hydrating fluid that is necessary to save a child’s life.

The big problem though is that this cheap and easy cure isn’t in the remote villages that need them.

Simon and his team started looking into ways of getting the life saving medicine to the remote villages that needed them.

A fantastic solution has been identified. Namely, to produce the medicine in packets that would fit into the spaces between the bottles in the Coke crates. As a result, the medicine can be delivered alongside the Coke bottles without taking up any additional space (and hence without increasing the cost of transporting the Coke).

The photo above shows a father and his lovely daughter together with one of the specially designed anti-diarrhoea kits that fit into a Coke crate.

In my opinion this is an absolutely brilliant idea – life saving medicine being delivered via Coke’s world class distribution channel without taking any additional space up on the delivery trucks. A great partnership between the commercial sector and the Not-for-Profit sector where all parties win.

The idea is currently being piloted in Zambia and more details can be found at colalife.org.

Congratulations to all concerned for such a great project.