Vaccine cold chain refers to the storage, transportation and refrigeration facilities and equipment equipped to ensure the quality of vaccines from vaccine production enterprises to inoculation units. Because vaccines are sensitive to temperature, every link from the vaccine manufacturing department to the vaccine use site may fail due to high temperature. In order to ensure that the vaccines used in the planned immunization have proper refrigeration equipment from production, storage, transportation, distribution to use, so that the vaccines are always kept in the prescribed refrigeration state without destroying the reasonable titer of the vaccines. The supporting equipment of the cold chain includes low-temperature cold storage for storing vaccines, freezers, ordinary cold storage, special refrigerated trucks for transporting vaccines, vaccine transport vehicles, refrigerators, freezers, refrigerated backpacks, computers and spare parts.
There are strict requirements for the transportation, storage and use of vaccines. If there is deviation, it will lead to immune deficiency, so that the vaccine can not fully play its due role. Common mistakes and precautions in vaccine transportation and storage mainly include:
1. High-temperature transportation: Limited by conditions, animal epidemic prevention institutions below the county level are rarely equipped with refrigerated trucks, and vaccines are mostly transported in thermos bottles or incubators. It is difficult to avoid high-temperature transportation, and even the temperature fluctuates, resulting in repeated freezing and thawing, which reduces the vaccine titer.
Second, improper preservation. Biological vaccines are generally afraid of heat, especially frozen vaccines, which need to be preserved in a low temperature environment. Freeze-dried vaccines need to be stored at-15℃, and inactivated vaccines need to be stored at 2- 15℃, and the temperature should not be too high or too low. Improper preservation mainly includes failure to preserve at the specified temperature, frozen preservation and low temperature preservation, arbitrary placement of vaccines, high temperature preservation, high and low temperature preservation, etc.