Excess power at cellphone towers to sustain cold chain for COVID-19 and other vaccines in off-the-grid rural areas in India

Vaccines are the only currently available effective means to protect people from COVID-19 and reach herd immunity that restricts further spread of the disease. Vaccines require to be maintained in a cold chain which needs continuous electric power. While even the cities and large townships in the Indian power grid suffer from frequent power outages, a large number of areas are out of the grid and do not have the benefits of electric power. The poor and agrarian communities living in these areas need to be provided with vaccines as much as the urban populations that are being currently served. There are cellphone towers everywhere now, even in the off-grid areas. These towers have excess power which can be harnessed to run the cold chain in the off-grid places, as is being done in some African countries and Myanmar. The background, need and modalities for using power from the cellphone towers to run the vaccine cold chain in the off-grid areas, in the interests of rendering social justice, are discussed in this article.