To Get Medicine to Africa, Health Experts Turn to Coca-Cola

Running water, electricity, and paved roads are hard to find in the remotest parts of sub-Saharan Africa. A bottle of warm Coca-Cola, though? No sweat. This impressive reach isn’t lost on public health advocates. They are looking to Coke’s distribution network to bring cheap, life-saving medication to some of the world’s most remote places.

Since September, more than 40,000 medicine kits designed to slip between Coke bottles stacked in a case have made the journey deep into the Zambian countryside. Called Kit Yamoyo, the packets were designed by London branding agency pi global for the U.K.-based health charity called ColaLife to fight one of sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest child killers, diarrhea. The kits, priced at the equivalent of $1, carry vital antidiarrheal medicine—a blister pack of zinc pills, oral rehydration salts—in a container that doubles as a mixing vessel. (The kit also carries a thin bar of soap.)