Vaccines are one of the critical components in public health protection measures. They protect people from preventable diseases, such as measles, chickenpox, polio, etc., by building natural immunity in the human body to fight off the disease in case of exposure. And what is more, strong immunity prevents people from spreading the disease. As such, the entire society gets healthier with vaccines that even can eradicate disease overtime. And it speaks clearly of the importance of vaccines.

If you are a lab owner, you have an essential factor to consider—vaccine storage. It would be best to have vaccine refrigerators and freezers in your lab to store them as they need specific storage conditions to remain effective. And you are responsible for maintaining the necessary standards and protecting your vaccine inventory. Ensure that you actuate the best practices for practical vaccine storage and handling.

The Need for Safe Vaccine Storage and Handling

Vaccines are delicate stuff. If you keep them at improper temperatures or break them, they will lose their potency and effectiveness, and it is needless to say that they will become useless. Damaged vaccines can do more harm than good.

What is a Vaccine Cold Chain?

There has to be a reliable and temperature-controlled supply chain for handling vaccines throughout their journey, from manufacturing facilities to healthcare facilities. Such a supply chain is called the cold chain, which encompasses transportation, delivery, and vaccine storage in medical facilities.

Individuals responsible for maintaining the cold chain should adequately maintain equipment, the proper temperature and follow the best practices all along the way.

The Best Lab Practices

If your vaccine inventory gets damaged, you will lose substantial money in replacing the stock. But, it is also not possible for you to eliminate all mistakes. What you can do is that you can adhere to a set of best practices to reduce damage to your vaccine stock. In this way, you can provide the best services to people, and simultaneously restrict money wastage.

So, what should you do?

Impart Proper Staff Training

You can maintain high lab standards only if your staff maintains them. Therefore, you should never fail to train your staff on the best practices. Staff training is one of the most important aspects of safely storing and handling vaccines in your lab.

Each staff member needs to undergo training on the best storage and handling practices. It will also help if you conduct an annual refresher course for your entire staff to keep them updated on the best practices.

You should also provide new training when your lab receives new vaccines or storage equipment.

With these steps, you can ensure that your staff has the proper knowledge to handle vaccines effectively.

Follow Standard Policies

You should formulate and write a standard policy for the best safe vaccine handling practices in your lab. And keep a copy of the standard operating procedure on storage units to enable your staff to refer to the documents quickly. Besides, distribute the copies to all your staff. It will help as references whenever they need it.

When you have a clear standard policy, you can hold your staff accountable to the rules that methodically make your lab function. It promotes work consistency in the lab.

In the policy, you should include relevant information, such as contact information of other manufacturers and providers in the cold chain, staff description, and training requirements. It should also include information about your lab’s vaccine management plan, storage, and handling procedures apart from emergency handling, storage, and transportation procedures. Besides, do not forget to include what to do during a power failure or equipment malfunction.

Document All Vaccines

Documentation is an essential part of your vaccine management process. It would help if you documented your vaccine supply’s orderings and receipts. If you maintain a small staff for this work, it will help as there will be people who can oversee the proper vaccine handling in your lab. They will be responsible for keeping track of the ordering, delivery, and organizing of vaccines. Moreover, they should keep track of the expiry dates for vaccines to use the older vaccines before expiry.

Temperature Monitoring

An essential part of your lab’s best practices is monitoring vaccine storage temperatures. Vaccines need specific temperature environments to stay effective and maintain potency. Your staff should keep records of temperature history for individual vaccines. It will help you to analyze the temperature trends for individual vaccines.

Moreover, ensure that your vaccine cold storage units have temperature monitoring devices to keep track of the vaccine temperature environment.

It will help if you keep in mind that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends using a digital data logger in vaccine cold storage units. The data logger records the unit’s current, minimum, and maximum temperatures. Additionally, such loggers can alert you to if the temperature goes out-of-range, which might be detrimental for your vaccines.