Evaluating the Sure Chill long-term passive device in Senegal

In remote locations, which often have high ambient temperatures and where there is no reliable power, it is a huge challenge to keep lifesaving vaccines at a safe temperature for a sufficient length of time to enable reliable immunization services. It is important that sufficient vaccine quantities can be kept safely between 2°C and 8°C at these critical immunization service delivery points so that static and outreach vaccination services can take place whenever and wherever they are needed. If vaccines freeze or get too warm, they can lose potency and may not protect the recipients, who are often infants and young children, from disease. An increase in the number of unprotected individuals in a community may lead to reemergence of disease in areas previously disease free. There is an urgent need for simple, reliable cold storage devices that do not require power and allow medical staff to strengthen and extend vaccination services to children in the hardest-to-reach places in the world. Sure Chill has been funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Welsh Government to develop a small-capacity vaccine cooler that can keep vaccine stock between 0°C and 10°C in remote, off-grid locations. In practice, the vaccine cooler needs to safeguard vaccine stocks for at least one month in ambient temperatures of up to 43°C. This report summarizes the results of PATH’s field evaluation of the Sure Chill LTPD device in Senegal and provides important feedback in terms of thermal performance, end-user inputs, and perceptions at the Ministry of Health (MOH) of the potential impact of the device on vaccine availability in Senegal. This Phase I evaluation involved simulated use; an anticipated next step is a Phase II evaluation incorporating real use of the device to store vaccines used in immunization sessions.