Christian Toé inventor of the Laafi Bag, a refrigerator bag able to keep vaccines at the proper temperature for four days

At 28 years old, the young Burkinabe engineer develops Laafi Bag, a refrigeration bag capable of keeping the vaccines at the proper temperature for four days.

The Laafi Bag project won € 10,000 (6,559,570 FCFA) in the Rebranding Africa Awards in Brussels and received a pledge of € 155,000 (CFAF 101,673,335) from Coris Bank Burkina Faso .

One in five children in Africa do not have access to vaccines, and this contributes to many deaths (approximately 3 million children under the age of five, according to WHO). This invention will therefore be very beneficial to the container, as it will transport and store vaccines and other sensitive medical products for 90 hours in the most critical areas.

Apart from its shelf life, another asset of the Laafi Bag, is that it is lightweight, and therefore facilitates the transportation of vaccines.

Christian is also the director of a startup named Genuine Concept who works with the Directorate of Prevention through Immunization of Burkina Faso. One of their recent projects is the placement of a geolocation system to locate agents that vaccinate, and allow real-time monitoring of vaccine temperatures.

Laafi will be available in the market once it has been approved by the WHO.

Source: BBC Africa