Sharing the following news article from the UK Guardian newspaper.
"A letter from the practice to a parent whose child received a vaccine during this period seen by Guardian Australia states that “recently we worked with Sydney Local Health District Public Health Unit to review how we handle and store vaccines. This review showed that some vaccines given since December 2019 may not have been stored at the right temperatures”. [...] “Some parts of the vaccine management didn’t follow the National Vaccination Storage Guidelines.""
Unfortunately, few details are provided but it is interesting to see vaccine supply chain and logistics in the mainstream media. Such vaccine storage challenges are rarely discussed, particularly in high-income countries. It would be interesting to know what storage shortcomings the review unearthed (VVM status?) and whether this was caused by a technical (cold chain equipment) or policy/HR issue. I would love to read the findings of an Effective Vaccine Management (EVM) assessment for this facility.
It is of course commendable that the Medical Centre has taken action to identify and address the problem by notifing the patients and parents of those who received a vaccine that their protection could have been compromised and offering revaccination at no cost.
Dear Dan
The vaccinators in tropical latitudes could have the idea the sun is the enemy and the ice packs must be totally frozen because they going to travel to remote areas where no freezer to change the icepacks. The training that we doing with vaccine carriers is about the cold life and cool life when we permit them reach the freezing point (0°C), the vaccinator wipe the external surface of the icepack and to put inside of the vaccine carrier, then the vaccines inside a plastic container to avoid direct contact of the vaccines with the icepack.
The VVM is a very useful tool, but in Colombia only two vaccines have it. Neumo 13 Pfizer, HA Sinovac and some batches de FA Fiotec and HPV MSD, but is important all of EPI vaccines have it.
Its interesting the article Géraldine shared about HPV vaccine delivery through a controlled temperature chain, I believe that the WHO must give the guideline to implement it in the EPI in all of the regions supported in articles like this other: https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/biologicals/vaccine-standardization/ectc/guidelines-on-ectc-trs_999_a5.pdf?sfvrsn=aae8a045_5&download=true
Best regards,
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