Modern medicine is made possible with the hard work of research lab staff, doctors, and more, and modern vaccines are a fine example of medicine’s progress. The concept of vaccines dates back to the late 1700s, but only recently have vaccines become mass-produced and standardized for use on all people, young and old. Vaccines are, without doubt, highly effective at bolstering a child’s immune system and preventing the spread of dangerous contagions such as measles, Rubella, and more. Responsible parents bring their children to the doctor for shots, and even adults may sometimes need their immunization to be updated from time to time. Vaccines are indeed powerful, but they are also fragile, and a research lab or a hospital needs the right hardware to store them safely. This is where pharmaceutical freezers, vaccine refrigerators, and lab freezers may come in, from large pharmaceutical freezers that sit on the floor to benchtop freezers or even under-the-counter fridges. These pharmaceutical freezers may also contain tissue samples or bacteria cultures for research purposes, and buying the correct type of wholesale pharmaceutical freezers is quite important.
All About Vaccines
As mentioned above, vaccines were innovated in the late 1700s, the year 1796 to be exact, when a certain Mr. Edward Jenner developed what he called the “arm to arm” inoculation method. He did this when he extracted a tissue sample from the skin blister of a cowpox patient and injected it into another patient’s skin. In this way, the patient’s immune system learned to fight cowpox, which essentially “trained” it to fight off similar contagions such as smallpox. Needless to say, the idea persisted, and by the 1940s, vaccines were being mass-produced for the first time. At the time, most vaccines targeted common illnesses of the day, such as smallpox, Diphtheria, Tetanus, and the whooping cough. As the years passed, even more viruses were added to the list, and by now, many more major diseases are stymied with the work of vaccines.
Many statistics and surveys are done to track the health of Americans, and the WHO tracks the health of humanity around the globe. This includes statistics for vaccines and immunization, and the numbers show that ever since the year 2000, some 17.1 million lives have been saved from measles, according to the WHO and the Measles and Rubella Initiative. In particular, the numbers of measles-related deaths has dropped from 546,800 to 114,900 from the year 2000 to 2014, an impressive 79% drop. Overall, it is believed that some 2.5 million lives around the world are saved every year thanks to the work of vaccines. Children get shots to set up their immune systems early, and the elderly may also get vaccines to bolster their age-worn immune systems. A crowded retirement home is a ripe place for disease to spread otherwise. But what about storage methods?
Chill the Vaccines
Vaccines are sensitive to temperature, so a hospital’s or lab’s staff will always have the right pharmaceutical freezers and vaccine fridges on hand to keep those vaccines safe. Some vaccines only need a fridge’s level of chilliness, and the CDC has recommended that those vaccines be kept at a temperature of 40 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius). Meanwhile, pharmaceutical freezers may be needed for other vaccines, which need a lower temperature still. The CDC has recommended a safe range of -58 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit, or -50 to -15 degrees Celsius for those vaccines in particular.
A lab or hospital’s staff should, when they are looking for wholesale fridges and freezers, make sure that they are buying pharmaceutical models in particular. Regular freezers and fridges are only meant for food and drink, and they have an unacceptably wide temperature variance when their doors are opened and outside air gets in. This would ruin vaccines held inside, so only a medical-grade freezer or fridge should be used. This keeps the contents safe. What is more, the staff should ensure that the fridge or freezer they buy is the proper size, because a too-small unit can’t hold all the vaccines necessary and a too-large unit is a waste of money. And the premises at smaller labs might not have room for a large model, but a small, countertop unit might be suitable.
