Among other medical discoveries and innovations, vaccines have proven highly effective at preventing the spread of infectious, deadly disease among the human population. Ever since the late 1700s, vaccines have done a lot of work to prevent infections of all sorts, and today, a wide swath of diseases are prevented with these injections. Americans may be vaccinated from childhood to their elder years, and for good reason. A child’s immune system is still growing, and an elderly citizen’s immune system is worn out from age. Proper vaccines help to reinforce their immune systems from many dangerous diseases, and a person may get their vaccines updated every few years. However, vaccines are fragile and temperature-sensitive, so a medical grade freezer or a vaccine refrigerator freezer may be used to contain them. Medical grade freezers are more precise than commercially available ones, and the same is true of a medical grade refrigerator. Scientific freezers like these can be found on the wholesale market, and hospital or clinic staff can find a medical grade freezer online without much trouble.
Vaccines Then and Now
Vaccines as we know them were first pioneered in the late 1700s, when a man named Edward Jenner developed what he called the “arm to arm” inoculation method. Designed to help protect a patient from smallpox, he did this by extracting a skin blister tissue sample from a patient infected with cowpox and injected this into the other patient. This would “train” the patient’s immune system against this and similar viruses, and protect it better from an actual infection. This proved successful, and over the decades, vaccines became more developed. By the 1940s, vaccines entered large scale production for the first time, and they were engineered for common diseases of the time such as smallpox, Diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough. Vaccines continued to develop throughout the 20th and early 21st century to cover an even broader inventory of common disease. By now, even once-common illnesses such as measles and Polio are a rarity.
Studies and trends have shown how effective modern vaccines are at preventing infectious disease in the modern human population, and measles serves as a fine example. The World Health Organizations, as well as the Measles and Rubella Initiative, have determined that ever since the year 2000, the measles vaccine has prevented some 17.1 million deaths. In particular, in the year 2000, a total of 546,000 deaths occurred from measles, but by the year 2014, that total had dropped to 114,900. This is a 79% drop in fatalities, a considerable amount. Overall, estimates show that vaccines save around 2.5 million lives every year from preventable diseases, and that’s more than the population of some cities. Children today get these vaccines to bolster their developing immune systems, and this can keep them safe. The elderly, meanwhile, may live in crowded nursing homes or retirement homes, and this is a place where disease may spread quickly. However, vaccines for the elderly will help prevent this and keep them healthier. Meanwhile, hospital and research lab staff can provide these vaccines but must store them properly for use.
Vaccine Storage
A commercially available freezer or fridge unit has the room for vaccines, but it’s not a medical grade freezer designed to store such items. A commercial fridge or freezer unit is meant to store ordinary food and drinks, and it will have an unacceptably wide temperature variance as the door is opened and closed for use. Instead, hospital staff and research lab staff will turn to medical suppliers to find wholesale freezers and fridge units for their needs, and they may find a variety of units available, all of them rated for vaccine storage.
These freezers and fridges can carefully maintain their internal temperatures, and they vary in size and weight. Staff looking for cooler units should be careful that they don’t buy a too-large unit that is a waste of money and space, and of course they should not buy a too-small unit that cannot even store everything inside. Some labs will have the open floor space to place a large fridge or freezer unit, and other, more cramped labs may use a small and light fridge unit and place it on a shelf for convenience.