HUMANITARIAN OPERATION LEBANON

PharmaBox

In humanitarian crisis contexts, the secure storage of essential medicines is a critical challenge to ensure access to healthcare for affected populations. Humanitarian organizations, often operating in difficult environments, require reliable and well-adapted solutions. 
 

Supported by the CMA CGM Foundation for over 12 years through its Containers of Hope humanitarian transport program, the NGO Action Against Hunger expressed the need for a robust, mobile, and energy self-sufficient storage solution. 

An innovation to improve healthcare in crisis areas

Leveraging the expertise and logistical capabilities of the CMA CGM Group’s in container transformation, the Foundation has developed the PharmaBox: a converted container designed to store medicines and malnutrition treatments with controlled temperature and humidity, even in the most challenging environments.

Conceived as a mobile pharmacy, this 40-foot container was designed by CMA CGM Group experts in collaboration with Action Against Hunger to provide 22 m³ of refrigerated space dedicated to storing medicines and treatments against malnutrition. Each PharmaBox offers enough capacity to ensure medical and nutritional care for more than 50,000 children and pregnant women every year.

Shipped from Marseille in December 2024, the first PharmaBox was deployed in February 2025 in Bangui, Central African Republic, a country facing a dire humanitarian situation, with more than 2.8 million people in emergency conditions.

One year later, in January 2026, the CMA CGM Foundation shipped two new PharmaBox units from the port of Dunkirk. Before reaching their final destinations in Sudan and Chad, the containers will transit through the port of Kribi in Cameroon, which serves as a logistics hub. They will then be transported from Kribi overland to their respective deployment sites. 

With these two new units bound for Sudan and Chad, the CMA CGM Foundation continues the progressive deployment of the PharmaBox units across Africa, building on the experience gained and the tangible impact observed in Bangui.  

The Foundation has also committed to making a total of 10 PharmaBox units available to Action Against Hunger. These containers will be installed near the organization’s intervention sites, according to evolving humanitarian needs in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, and Mozambique. 

The CMA CGM Foundation has designed Pharmabox

A converted container, tailored for humanitarian filedwork

  • Easy to deploy and redeploy in humanitarian zones, near Action Against Hunger intervention sites.
  • A modular interior design providing a high storage capacity.
  • Energy self sufficient equipment powered by a kit of 10 photovoltaic panels.
  • Secure, medicine-optimized storage with temperature control (20-25°C) and humidity regulation (<65%).