Description
Cyclone Komen devastated many places in 2015, with one of them being western Myanmar. Landslides and flooding prevented rescue medical teams from the World Health Organization (WHO) from finding suitable dry locations to set up their makeshift clinics. They had no WHO workers with the necessary knowledge to navigate the areas that became accessible only by boat.
Fortunately, the locals had knowledge of the area. Volunteer teams composed of community volunteers and WHO staff decided to turn shallow-draft boats into mobile clinics. These WHO disaster relief mobile clinics worked to distribute resources and aid that would otherwise not be reachable. The mobile clinics were created on smaller vessels to allow them to navigate through tight and dangerous terrain to connect isolated locations to larger ones that had the resources they needed.
Smaller vessels like the ones they used resolved a critical “last-mile problem,” a saying used when referring to getting people and objects through the last leg of a journey to a final destination. Without these boats, residents impacted in isolated areas would have continued to be disconnected from resources such as access to basic healthcare.
Connection to Mobile Networked Creativity
While the WHO disaster relief mobile clinics are supported by large international nonprofit organizations, they are still, nonetheless, examples of Mobile Networked Creativity; they are the outcomes of people coming together to use existing technologies across an area of need. It demonstrated how our public institutions should not be limited to stationary locations when so much of the world is experiencing precarious mobility. And while issues of access and equity are not solved through creative approaches to the “last-mile problem,” it can push us closer towards a sense of mobility, justice, and inclusion.
Location
Western Myanmar
To Learn More
- “Home Page,” World Health Organization.
