Here in the United States, vaccines have become commonplace and quite widely accessible indeed – but vaccines have the power to save lives on a worldwide basis. In fact, more than two and a half million deaths are prevented over the course of just one single year, all thanks to the administration of vaccines. This accessibility to getting vaccinations has been made possible for a number of different reasons, such as the development of new vaccines and their ease to produce as time passes on and technologies advance.
In addition to this, proper storage methods have also helped to make vaccines easier to transport all throughout the world – and therefore to distribute to more people than ever before as well. The undercounter medical refrigerator is one such place to store vaccines, and an undercounter medical refrigerator has become quite common in pharmacies and doctor’s offices all throughout the country. In addition to the undercounter medical refrigerator, the use of larger vaccine storage refrigerators is also common. No matter what the size of a vaccine refrigerator, from the undercounter medical refrigerator and up, the temperature of such storage devices will matter quite a bit. Ideally, the undercounter medical refrigerator or other such medical grade refrigerator will be kept at a temperature of around 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Of course, the undercounter medical refrigerator is not the only way that vaccines can be stored. In addition to your typical undercounter medical refrigerator, a vaccine freezer can also be utilized for longer term storage. In order to keep vaccines in a vaccine freezer in good shape for a long period of time, the temperature of the average lab freezer should not dip below -58 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition to this, the temperature of such a medical freezer should also not exceed a maximum temperature of 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
And the use of such tools of storage has made a huge impact in our world, particularly here in the United States. Consider the polio vaccine, for instance. Polio was once a terror in this country, with parents and children alike living in fear (especially during the summer months, when polio was able to spread from child to child all too rapidly). Polio changed lives forever, and ended many others. Nowadays, however, polio has been eradicated from the United States, though it still lives on in other countries where vaccine access is not as readily available. Here in the United States, however, more than 93% of all children of toddler age (falling between 19 and 35 months) have received this vaccination.
The MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, has also made a huge difference in the way that we live here in the United States. After all, measles deaths in great numbers are closer in history than many of us might actually realize. In fact, more than half of a million people died of measles here in the United States alone as recently as in the year of 2000, a year that is still less than 20 years in our past. By the time that we had reached the year of 2014, however, measles deaths had dropped by more than three quarters, by a staggering 79%, with less than 150,000 people dying of the disease over the course of that year. In the years that have followed since, this number has become even more reduced – and it’s all thanks to the widespread access to the vaccine preventing against measles and a number of other conditions.
At the end of the day, there is no denying the importance of vaccinations in our world as we know it. From getting vaccinated against polio to getting your child their chicken pox vaccine, vaccines save lives and simply just make our overall quality of life better as well. In the years that are to come, it is hopeful that vaccines will become more readily available and prominent all throughout the world as a whole, with less and less people dying from preventable illnesses with each year that passes us by.
