POST 01053E : VVM USE
Follow-up on Posts 01028E, 01035E, 01042E and 01050E
14 February 2007
________________________________________
This posting contains three contributions, from :
1. Vijay Kiran (mailto:
[email protected]) from India.
2. Hans Everts (mailto:
[email protected]) from WHO/ Geneva
3. Idrissa Yalcouyé (mailto:
[email protected])
from Haïti who asks an interesting question.
________________________________________
I thank Giridhar Babu to have brought a very useful item to lime light.
I agree with Dr. Babu, in that the quality of
vaccines from the Govt. Institutions is good and
dependable because systems are in place.
Immunization from Private practitioners
(Including Registered Medical Practioners) in
India constitutes about 30% over all, and more so in urban areas.
While there is no established system in the
private practice for cold chain mantenence, -
lack of supervision, lack of giuidelines, lack of
regulatory mechanisms may lead to doubting the
quality of vaccines administered from private sources.
Better late than never, we can start focussing on
these issues too. May be a small illustrative
hand book on the cold chain, the latest schedule
of vaccines would be useful to start with.
Dr. Vijay Kiran
Country Representative
IMMUNIZATIONbasics
New Delhi.
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There seems to be a contradiction between "The
non availability of refrigerator in most of the
places makes it impossible to come out with
general guidelines" and "But lack of uniform
guidelines, regulation will make it difficult for
the optimal utilisation for the community."
I do not understand the objection against
icepacks. I agree that with VVM we do not need
icepacks everywhere, but they still serve a
purpose in limiting the degradation of the VVM
there where necessary. OPV should be stored at
optimal quality everywhere to leave a margin of
cold chain flexibility at peripheral level. The
peeling off of the lable is often more due to the
fact that blocks of ice rather than icepacks are
used and can in all cases be prevented by putting the vials in a plastic bag.
I think general guidelines can be very useful as
long as they do not give standard prescriptive
solutions. A general guideline should be based on
the same ideas as micro planning for campaigns in
that the local conditions play a key role in
shaping the solutions. The guideline can help
define options for solutions and set standards by
which each solution should abide, in this case the status of the VVM.
Hans Everts
WHO Geneva
Technical officer EPI
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Hello,
I find the discussions and exchanges of ideas on
the use of VVM very interesting. I am in perfect
agreement with Mr. Giridhara R Babu who requests
not to complicate the use of VVM in the field.
Nevertheless, I would like to ask a question
concerning the various stages of VVM. Here in
Haiti, people usually talk of VVM “advanced stage
1â€