Japan, UNICEF-supported vaccine refrigerators arrive in Viet Nam

The refrigerators will be delivered to 300 provincial and district health facilities in Viet Nam, where they will store COVID-19 vaccines for vaccination days. The delivery is a part of UNICEF’s ongoing support to improve cold chain systems for the nation-wide COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

This support is aimed at delivering vaccines to each and every person in all corners of Viet Nam, which will complement efforts of the COVAX Facility, said Japanese Ambassador to Viet Nam Takio Yamada, adding that Japan will continue to extend support to the Vietnamese efforts to deploy vaccines to every person in the country with a view to containing COVID-19 as quickly as possible.

As part of the support to improve capacity of the health and immunization systems to efficiently and effectively administer COVID-19 vaccines, UNICEF has worked with the Ministry of Health to assess ‘cold chain’ capacity identifying the needs for fridges, freezers, refrigerator trucks and cold boxes for the safe transportation and storage of vaccines.

Meanwhile, UNICEF Representative Rana Flowers supposed that support from the Government of Japan will help to ensure the cold chain capacity, which is crucial for the safe rollout of COVID 19 vaccination and for routine immunization.

This shipments bring the specially produced Vaccine refrigerator TCW 80 AC, manufactured by B Medical in Luxembourg with green technology for very low power consumption and environmentally sustainability, which can maintain cold conditions for vaccines that must be stored at a temperature range of 2˚C to 8˚C, even when power failure occurs for up to 72 hours.

All of the current COVID-19 vaccines administered in Viet Nam require this temperature range at the vaccination sites.  With a storage capacity of 80.5 L, the refrigerators will be able to store vaccines doses for vaccination days.

By Thuy Dung