Sterile instruments are critical for lots of medical uses from obstetrics and gynecology to treatment of wounds, to dental work and surgical procedures. For 50% of clinics in rural settings that serve 3 billion of the people on our planet sterile medical instruments is a luxury. Without access to electricity these remote clinics have no adequate method of ensuring sterilization. Boiling instruments is not enough. Dipping instruments in alcohol doesn’t do the trick either. That’s why 25% of patients undergoing surgical procedures in rural settings end up with post-operative infections.
That’s why a team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers decided to develop a way to sterilize medical instruments using sunlight. They call their invention the Solarclave. The device can be assembled from local materials and is portable. The heat is generated by focusing sunlight at a closed, pressurized container using 140 mirrors, each 7.62 centimeters square (3 by 3 inches). It takes 90 minutes for the solar reflectors to raise the interior temperature of the container to 121 Celsius.
As seen in the images below, the Solarclave largely uses locally-sourced materials and commonly available technology to manufacture it. Total cost of materials is less than $200 US.
The manufacturing components include:
The Solarclave can be scaled up by 50% to serve larger health centres and hospitals. And it has other uses as well. Locals can build separate units to as solar ovens for cooking, or solar water distillers to create clean drinking water.
