

Women in rural areas of the developing world often have to walk all day to get to a health clinic to retrieve the oral rehydration packets needed to treat their children's diarrhea, a leading killer for those under the age of five.

When they arrive, however, the medicine is often gone. The solution lies in getting the packets closer to outlying villages, a logistical challenge in distributing a world renowned soft drink. "You will find Coca-Cola in any village at any time in the course of the year, but you'll not find medicines. What’s the difference? There's something to be learned there," says Zambian Minister of Health Joseph Kasonde.

Claire Ward's indie documentary —The Cola Road—follows that learning curve as an innovative nonprofit piggybacks on the Coca-Cola distribution network in Zambia to distribute oral rehyrdration packets. A former editor at Maclean's, Ward made the film for her master's project in journalism at New York University, funding it largely through crowdsourced financing.

The film highlights the work of Simon and Jane Berry, who head ColaLife, as they probe whether a plastic kit containing zinc and the salts used to combat dehydration in stricken babies and toddlers would win acceptance by the country's Coca-Cola bottler, South African Breweries, as well as wholesalers, small rural shopkeepers and critically the parents of sick children living in far-flung provinces.

The kit, sold for a dollar (5000 kwacha), fits snugly into the neck of the Coke bottles slotted into the familiar vermillion, hard-plastic crates and delivered by donkey, oxcart, bicycle as well as the familiar trucks and buses. ("Think Outside the Box and Inside the Crate," as the film's promo poster entreats.)



Here's a trailer for the film and a video that contains some footage from the documentary:
