One-third of Africans spend more than two hours waiting to receive health care services. Access to electricity is also a major issue in health facilities across the continent, limiting the care they can provide.
A group of Dutch students hopes a newly developed vehicle called Stella Juba will help provide healthcare to people who struggle to access it.
The solar-powered ambulance is equipped with medical equipment such as an X-ray machine, an ultrasound machine and a refrigerator to keep vaccines cool. A solar panel is installed on the roof, allowing you to charge the vehicle while driving. An expandable solar panel that can be folded up when not on the move provides additional charging area.
SolarTeam Eindhoven, a team of 23 students from Eindhoven University of Technology and two other educational institutions, says Stella Juba is “the world’s first solar ambulance”.
In reality, it operates more like a mobile clinic. Instead of picking up and transporting patients, it transports medical equipment and the energy to power it to places where those items aren’t available.
The students tested the vehicle in Kenya this month in collaboration with the non-governmental organization Amref Health Africa to see if it can handle long journeys over difficult terrain and power on-board medical equipment when arriving in remote areas.
They found that while stationary, Stella Juva produced more energy than it consumed while using all onboard medical equipment simultaneously. This shows that it can operate independently without being connected to traditional fuel or charging infrastructure.
SolarTeam Eindhoven and Amref Health Africa said the device could have treated around 200 people over two days, although it was not used on actual patients.
In total, the students drove the Stella Juba more than 800 kilometers (about 500 miles) across the country, including a visit to a clinic in Moshiro, in the Narok region of southwestern Kenya, which has no electricity.
This required several hours of travel over dusty, clay roads full of potholes. “We were all very positively surprised,” Isabella Wanningen, a 22-year-old member of Solar Team Eindhoven and studying computer science and engineering, told CNN. Stella Juba “received an even better response than we expected,” she says.
Amref Health Africa program manager John Kuttner says power shortages at clinics in places like Moshiro are impacting people, including pregnant women, who don’t have easy access to ultrasounds. “Solar ambulances will be very useful in places like this,” he says.
Since 2013, Solar Team Eindhoven has brought together students to collaborate on a year-long innovation project to build sustainable vehicles. These include the Stella Vita solar-powered camper and the Stella Terra, the world’s first off-road solar-powered vehicle.
Some projects have been commercially successful. Earlier this year, Lightyear, a startup founded by five Solar Team Eindhoven graduates, unveiled a demonstration electric vehicle equipped with advanced solar charging technology developed in collaboration with Japanese automaker Nissan.
Stella Juva will be shipped back to the Netherlands, but the students hope this isn’t the end of the road for their idea. “We want to inspire industry and society to use innovative technologies like Stella Juba to tackle social problems,” says team member Jarno Basten, 23, who researches sustainable energy technologies.
There may be other obstacles to getting the prototype on the road. Funding is a major challenge for Kenya’s health sector, a problem exacerbated by US President Donald Trump’s administration’s cuts to foreign aid.
Still, Kenyan health experts say the success of the ambulance test could have ripple effects, from encouraging Kenyan students to work on their own innovations to demonstrating how sunlight can power the medical sector.
Kuttner said the country has made significant progress in increasing renewable energy capacity, but solar power is not widely used to provide health care.
UNICEF and others are supporting solar-powered refrigeration systems to keep vaccines cold. Corporate foundations are also funding solar-powered lighting for some facilities.
Kennedy Wakoli, Family and Reproductive Health Specialist at Amref Health Africa, said harnessing the power of the sun could be important to improve access to health care in remote areas, as “solar energy is ubiquitous.”
He hopes Stella Juva will act as a catalyst to make that happen. “This country is moving towards renewable energy and this will be very important in terms of how we implement renewable energy in the healthcare sector,” he says.
