A number of inventions and discoveries have rapidly enhanced and improved the field of medicine within the last 400 years, from microscopes to germ theory and modern sterilization techniques to kill bacteria on the surface of medical equipment. Vaccines, for their part, are instrumental in protecting people of all ages from deadly viruses, and this has been done for over 200 years now. Still, vaccines are fragile, and they are sensitive to temperature while they are in storage. This is why medical fridge freezers and vaccine refrigerators, or other pharmacy freezers, should be used to store them until ready for use. Now, what is there to know about medical fridge freezers and the vaccines that are stored inside? What are vaccines capable of?
Vaccine Basics
The very idea of vaccines is well over 200 years old, and vaccines as we know them were first pioneered in late 18th century England. The British scientist Edward Jenner developed them with the “arm to arm” inoculation method, a means of protecting patients from smallpox. He did this by extracting a tissue sample from a cowpox patient’s skin blister and transferring it to a second patient, thus training that patient’s immune system to recognize and fight off such viruses. Suffice it to say, this method proved a success, and vaccines continued to be produced and used ever since then. Vaccine theory kept improving over time, and by the 1940s, powerful vaccines were being mass produced for the first time. Many of them were geared to fight off smallpox, whooping cough, diphtheria, and tetanus, and other common illnesses of the time. By now, vaccines can also protect patients from Polio and measles, among other contagions.
People young and old alike need vaccines, to protect both themselves and the people around them. Children and babies need vaccines to bolster their young immune systems and keep them safe, and while many babies and children died of illnesses in centuries past, vaccines have made sure that this is no longer the case. Responsible parents will bring their children to the doctor’s office regularly for shots and inoculations. Meanwhile, adults should visit local urgent care centers or hospitals during influenza season to get shots during a flu drive, and this can keep a whole community safe. The elderly, for their part, need shots to update and strengthen their age-worn immune systems, and this can prevent the spread of disease in crowded retirement homes.
Statistics show us how effective vaccines are. Every year, some 2.5 million preventable deaths are indeed prevented by vaccines of all sorts, and the measles vaccine in particular is quite effective. The WHO and the Measles and Rubella Initiative say that around 17.1 million lives have been saved thanks to the measles vaccine since the year 2000. Also, the yearly measles death count dropped from 546,800 in 2000 down to 114,900 in 2014, an impressive 79% drop. But these kinds of figures are only possible when the vaccines are stored properly, and that means having medical fridge freezers and scientific freezers on hand at a hospital or urgent care center.
Wholesale Medical Fridge Freezers
Typically, it is the staff of medical research labs, urgent care centers, and hospitals who are looking for wholesale medical refrigerators, often through online catalogs. These medical fridge freezers feature precise temperature control and storage racks, to store vaccines property inside. By contrast, commercial freezers and fridges are only designed to store food and drinks, and their internal temperatures change too much when their doors are opened. This makes them unsuitable for vaccine storage. As for the internal temperature, frozen vaccines need to be stored at -58 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit (-50 to -15 degrees Celsius) according to CDC guidelines, and vaccine fridges should have a temperature of 40 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius). Such units can be bought either new from medical supply wholesalers or gently used on the secondary market, but they should also be the right size for the buyer’s needs. A large and busy hospital may need a huge vaccine fridge for a flu drive, and a small research lab’s staff may instead look for petite benchtop freezers to save room. Some vaccines fridges are under-the-counter models, to save even more room.
