Vaccines are important in the United States as everywhere else around the entirety of the world, and the spread of vaccine can help to have the opposite effect on disease, in many cases halting it in its tracks and effectively eradicating it. This means that vaccines need to become more accessible than ever before, which can often be done with the implementation of the pharmacy freezer. Aside from the pharmacy freezer for vaccine storage, other storage methods include an undercounter medical refrigerator and other such vaccine storage refrigerators, of which the pharmacy freezer represents only one possibility.
Unfortunately, vaccines are not as widely used as they should be. Though more than ninety three percent of all children who are between the ages of nineteen months and thirty five receive a vaccine that prevents them from contracting polio, there are still nearly seven percent of children around the country who are not able to receive it for various reasons. In some cases, it is because their parents or legal guardians have rejected the notion of vaccines for the fear that they are more harmful than they are helpful (something that is strictly not true and has never been proven in the slightest) to the simply inability to access the vaccine, something that can be helped with the implementation of the pharmacy freezer. Unfortunately, a lack of access to vaccinations is all too widespread, and very nearly twenty five million children all throughout the world are not able to get the vaccines that they should have before they reach the age of twelve months. This, of course, leaves them susceptible to a number of otherwise preventable diseases, diseases that have the potential to greatly impact their lives in a negative fashion – or even, in many cases throughout the course of history and into the present day – end their lives.
Even something as simple as the flu can be deadly if it is not vaccinated against. Many people, particularly in the United States, consider the flu to be a routine illness, only slightly more serious than the common cold. This could not be further from the truth. Fortunately, many people are able to adequately fight off the flu – but many others are not, particularly the very young, the very old, and those who have compromised immune systems. For such people, particularly if the flu season is a severe one, contracting the flu can be deadly. In just the course of time since the year of 2010, less than ten years, the flu has killed more than fifty six thousand people and put more than seven hundred thousand people in the hospital in just the United States alone. And even if you are not one of the populations at risk, it is still important that you yourself get your flu shot. This is because of herd immunity, which can be very effective at helping to protect those who cannot be vaccinated against the flu, such as babies who are under the age of six months and those who have seriously compromised immune systems. And even if you do end up contracting the flu, getting a flu vaccine is very likely to make your course of illness far less serious than it would have been otherwise, mitigating the potential of serious symptoms that could lead to other, even more dangerous complications such as pneumonia.
But it is hugely important that vaccines such as the flu vaccine are stored properly, such as in the pharmacy freezer at your local pharmacy. A pharmacy freezer must be kept at the certain and specific temperature of forty degrees fahrenheit for refrigerated vaccines. For frozen vaccines, a pharmacy freezer can be kept at a temperature of around negative fifty eight degrees fahrenheit for optimal storage conditions and to keep the vaccine itself in as pristine of a condition as is possible, presenting the most viable vaccination to all patients who come through the pharmacy in an attempt to protect themselves against the flu.
From the pharmacy freezer to the medical freezer, keeping vaccines safe and accessible is crucial.
