NID Develops Safe Storage Device For Vaccines

Are you one of those people who acquired a disease despite being vaccinated against it? Chances are, the vaccine given to you was not stored at the right temperature.

Now an innovation designed by the National Institute of Design (NID) can significantly retain the potency of vaccines for longer periods of time.

Maintaining the cold chain - the optimum temperature for a specific vaccine from manufacturing to beneficiary point - is most essential for a vaccine to be effective. "If kept at wrong temperatures or in refrigerators that also store eatables, it is likely that the vaccine will lose its potency," says Dr N D Ghasura, additional director, health and family welfare. Some vaccines are sensitive to heat, others to cold. Except polio and measles, around 10 other vaccines, including snake-bite vaccine, should never be stored at freezing point.

"During transport to rural areas, sometimes untrained staff do not take storage norms seriously which leads to vaccines losing their potency," says Pradyumna Vyas, principal designer at the faculty of Industrial Design, NID citing the reason for his designing the 'iceless' thermoelectric device which maintains the temperature at four degrees, using a battery.