Global average loss of vaccines due to break in cold chain is estimated to be about 25%, excluding America and Europe. This was the figure that Mahesh Krishnamoorthy, CEO and Founder of Degree M Labs, shared with Climate Control Middle East, while speaking on global trends in relation to healthcare and refrigeration. “Vaccination is the cheapest form of preventive medicine,” he stressed. “Even after sustained global efforts, a considerable percentage of the population in developing countries remains non-vaccinated.”

Krishnamoorthy emphasised that ensuring the right temperature is a major challenge the world faces with regard to the storage and transportation of vaccines to remote locations, where power is not available. “Maintaining temperature is an uphill task,” he said. “Various types of refrigerators have been made to address this problem.” A common approach to detect excursion of temperature in vaccines is to rely on the ‘vaccine vial monitor’ he said. This is a colour-coded sticker affixed to the vaccine vial, and the colour of the same will indicate if it has been exposed beyond the temperature range.

However, Krishnamoorthy stressed, the monitor on its own does not prevent the loss of the product but only informs that it is not to be used. “Our intervention,” he said, “is to prevent the loss by alerting the stakeholders at the time of excursion, so that there can be immediate action to prevent loss.”