Up to 50% of vaccines are wasted globally every year because of lack of cold-chain - says WHO. How soon will you get the Covid-19 vaccine?
Akash Agarwal
Specilist in Rental Mobile Containerised Cold Storage 80 Sqft to 10000 Sqft across India. Pharmaceutical Storage, Customised Complete Cold Storage solutions. Industries - Fish, Dairy, Foodservices,Logistics,Pharma.
While India and the world are moving ahead with considerable success in trials for the Covid-19 vaccine, its distribution remains a challenge especially in a country like ours with a huge population.
The World Health Organization estimates that up to 50% of vaccines are wasted globally every year; a large part because of lack of temperature control and the logistics to support an unbroken cold-chain.
Vaccines need to be stored and transported while maintaining temperatures between 2-8o C. Any deviation leads to the vaccine getting spoiled and thus wasted.
The chart below showcases how cold-chain and cold-storage is crucial at all stages of vaccine mobilization.
The situation today demands greater attention as we cannot afford any wastage with whatever supplies we will get for the Covid-19 vaccine.
The Union Health Ministry of India has already been in discussion to leverage the existing domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity while engaging with international manufacturers for early delivery. On 3 August, the health ministry announced that India's Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN), an indigenously-developed, online logistic management system used to track real-time information on vaccine supply chain and stocks across the country, will be deployed. Discussions on enhancing the cold chain ecosystem have also taken place.
I was a part of a roundtable in July 2020 with Hon’ble Minister - Lord Ahmad, Mr. Adar Poonawala, Prof. K. VijayRaghavan, Prof. Ashutosh Sharma, and many other eminent personalities. We discussed how India and the UK can work together to deploy cold-chain technology to make the distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine possible.
Some factors that are crucial to winning this race against the virus and time:
- Timely deployment - we need to start now to ensure the distribution system is in place at the time of vaccine availability
- Large scale implementation - considering the size of our population we scale and speed both
- Last-mile delivery - cold-chain to be leveraged for distribution to the remotest areas
How Crystal can help in maximizing reach and minimizing wastage of Covid-19 vaccine:
- Large network - Covering the eastern belt of India wrt storage and transport
- Portability - Plug and play portable cold-rooms to help in efficient storage as per requirement
- Cost-effectiveness - Portable cold storage is much cheaper compared to building a cold-room. Also available on rent and lease along with outright buy.
- Tech support - Swift technical support on-call and on-site to ensure no downtime
At Crystal, we have geared up to support the government to fight this pandemic and make India Corona-free.
Vice Chair of Governing Board at HSDC, a three-campus FE college at South Downs, Havant and Alton. Company owner and Director. Business consultant with a focus on Quality Management
4 年Well said Umit. The industry has thankfully vastly moved on since then. Nevertheless, challenges still remain
Retired at 33.
4 年The vaccine industry is unique in that almost all sales are institutional. In a highly technical field most decisions in the logistics vertical, to me, seemed non scientific and discretionary. For eg I know large companies supplying MMR and other lyophilized vaccines to the whole of Mexico using dry ice! This is a joke. Temperature below 8C is the requirement & it can be done so easily. Even water based coolants with SAP can achieve that. The DTP vaccine group is supplied to #PAHO using envirotainers! To use dry ice carriers for class B & C vaccines is just a balatant waste of resources. There are simply too many passive and active alternatives that can supply the vaccine at bespoke temperature ranges while factoring failure of logistics at the ground level .. But the corruption. Also according to me alongside other experts in the logistics vertical feel that WHO too needs to revise the IVB Guideline, particularly the testing section. The continuous stress test of +43 & - 5 makes it difficult to designer shippers to meet a 2 to 8C temperature range.
CEO, Entrepreneur, Founder, Advisor, Industry Expert, Board Member
4 年Akash Agarwal this is exactly why we launched labs-logs
Key Account Management; Six Sigma Black Belt;
4 年The statement was in fact made by WHO in their 'Monitoring Vaccine Wasteage' Repport, however, the document is from 2005 (!): Source: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/68463/WHO_VB_03.18.Rev.1_eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Please look at Page 14