What are the precautions in the cold chain transportation of vaccines?

The Code of Practice for the Quality Management of Pharmaceutical Business has detailed provisions for the cold storage of vaccines: Article 30: (Warehouse temperature and humidity conditions) Enterprises should be compatible with the scale of operation and meet the requirements for the storage of medicines in the room temperature warehouse, cool warehouse and cold storage. Among them, the temperature of the room temperature warehouse is 10~30℃, the temperature of the cool warehouse does not exceed 20℃, and the temperature of the cold warehouse is 2~10℃; the relative humidity of each warehouse should be maintained between 35~75%. Article 32: (Transportation of vaccines, biological products equipment) enterprises dealing with vaccines or biological products should have refrigerated (frozen) storage and transportation facilities and equipment appropriate to the scale of operation and the types of business. Article 83 (heat preservation and cold storage in transportation) For the transportation of medicines with temperature requirements, corresponding heat preservation or cold storage measures shall be taken. Article 84 (vaccine transportation) refrigerated vehicles and refrigerated (frozen) boxes for the transportation of vaccines should be able to automatically regulate and display the temperature condition. Article 86: (Time of Drug Transportation) The transportation of drugs shall be completed within the specified time, and the transportation vehicle shall not be used as a storage place for drugs.

The vaccine cold chain refers to the storage and transportation cold storage facilities and equipment equipped to ensure the quality of vaccines during their operation from vaccine manufacturers to vaccination units. Since vaccines are sensitive to temperature, every link between the department where vaccines are manufactured and the site where they are used may fail due to high temperature. In order to ensure that the vaccines used in immunization programs are properly refrigerated throughout the entire process from production, storage, transportation, distribution to use, so that the vaccines are always placed under the specified state of cold preservation to ensure that the reasonable potency of the vaccine is not impaired. The supporting equipment of the cold chain includes low-temperature cold storage of vaccines, ice wandering freezer, general cold storage, delivery of vaccines special refrigerated trucks, vaccine transport vehicles, refrigerators, refrigerated boxes, refrigerated backpacks, as well as computers and spare parts, and so on.

The transportation, preservation and use of vaccines have strict requirements, if there is a deviation will lead to immune deficiency, so that the vaccine can not give full play to its proper role. Vaccines in the transportation, preservation process there are common errors and precautions are:

One, high-temperature transportation: due to the conditions of the county below the animal epidemic prevention institutions are rarely equipped with refrigerated trucks, vaccines in the process of transportation using thermos flasks or boxes, it is difficult to avoid high-temperature transportation, and even the temperature fluctuations caused by the compound freezing and thawing, which reduces the vaccine's efficacy.

Two, improper preservation. Biological vaccines are generally afraid of heat, especially frozen vaccine, need to be stored in a low-temperature environment, frozen vacuum-dried vaccines, frozen need to be stored in -15 ℃ environment, inactivated vaccine need to be stored in a low-temperature 2-15 ℃ environment, can not be too high or too low. Improper preservation of the main temperature is not in accordance with the provisions of the preservation, frozen preservation and low-temperature preservation is not divided, the vaccine is placed arbitrarily, high temperature storage, the temperature is high and low.