Vaccines are incredibly important, not only in the United States, but around the world at large. There is no doubt about it that vaccines have the power to save lives, both in the very young, the very old, and everyone in between. Before vaccines, deaths were far higher in relation to these now preventable illnesses, and parents often feared that their children would not make it to live to adulthood – or even out of infancy. But thanks to large scale vaccine production and the ability to adequately store vaccines (in a medical freezer), vaccines have become commonplace in the United States and many other parts of the world, and their influence continues to spread.
Vaccines have a long history, long before we had such technologies as the medical freezer for vaccine storage to prolong their lifespan and availability of use. In fact, preliminary and rudimentary vaccines came into play around three hundred years ago, in relation to smallpox. Right before the turn of the nineteenth century, in the year of 1796, arm to arm innoculation against smallpox, where the blister from an infected person’s skin was extracted and injected into the arm of someone who was not infected to produce immunity in said person was discovered by Edward Jenner. But it was not until the 1940s that vaccines became widely commercially available, as it was then that large scale vaccine production began and children in the United States began to be widely immunized against the diseases of diptheria, whooping cough (also known as pertussis), tetanus and smallpox. Now, in this the current year of 2018, vaccines are able to stop and prevent as many as two and half million deaths around the world, with as many as ninety three percent of all children vaccinated against life threatening diseases such as polio – which once ravaged communities all throughout the United States. This can be seen particularly clearly as well in cases of measles. In fact, the measles vaccine has become so effective and so widespread in the United States that in just the less than fifteen years between the years of 2000 and 2014, the number of total deaths related to measles dropped by as much as seventy nine percent, accumulating to more than seventeen million total lives saved thanks to the measles vaccine in particular.
But the storage of vaccines is crucial to their ability to be used, and must be taken very seriously. Vaccine storage refrigerators or the medical freezer are commonly used for various storage purposes for various vaccinations. A scientific freezer, or medical freezer, as it is often called, should be stored at no higher a temperature than forty degrees Fahrenheit – or five degrees Celsius. When a vaccine is stored in a medical freezer, it is important that the temperature of the medical freezer is recorded on a daily basis, and the overall temperature of the medical freezer needs to be adjusted immediately if it is out of the desirable range of temperature for vaccine storage. Fortunately, such a medical freezer (or pharmacy freezer) as well as undercounter medical refrigerator are common in many medical facilities where vaccines might be necessary. Such pharmaceutical grade refrigerators make access to vaccines easier than ever before, particularly in the case of the flu vaccine.
Influenza, though many people don’t consider it to be particularly serious, still has the power to kill. In fact, data gathered by the CDC shows that there have been more than fifty five thousand flu related deaths since 2010, and more than seven hundred thousand flu related hospitalizations in the same period of time. This means that the flu vaccine is an important one and, when stored in a medical freezer, has become fortunately more accessible than ever before in history.
There is no doubt about it that vaccinations are hugely important. Vaccines save lives, and prevent often painful and debilitating illnesses in many places around the world. Through the use of the medical freezer and other similar methods of vaccine storage, vaccines have been able to become widespread in all places of the United States, protecting children and adults alike from many preventable diseases.
