It doesn’t seem long ago that vaccines were stored in small bar fridges in surgeries that often used to double up as a place to keep lunch and fresh milk. The Goonellabah Medical Centre upgraded about nine years ago and we graduated to a new domestic fridge that was exclusively used for vaccines as recommended.

Then came the division’s vaccination project to improve the cold chain and we put temperature gauges in our fridge to check that the ideal temperature was being maintained. The next step was a continuing monitoring system for all the shelves with a print out that was regularly checked.

This is when disaster struck. In July, a readout showed that on two days for a few minutes the temperature on two shelves dipped a fraction below zero degrees. An article in the April edition of GPSpeak outlines why domestic fridges are prone to doing this. The tragedy for us was the loss of about $2,500 worth of vaccines plus the added cost of buying a purpose built fridge (about $2,900).

Even with this move there are still some issues for us to ponder with our purpose built fridge. For example, it is expensive to run, noisy and one can’t help but wonder what would happen if there was a prolonged power failure. There are systems to phone you up at home in this event but there is still the dilemma of just what you are going to do about it - popping the vaccines in an esky with a wrapped up ice block also carries some risk to the vaccines.

Despite these issues, I do think that if you haven’t already got a purpose built fridge you may wish to reconsider. If you would like more information about vaccine fridges, contact Rachelle Deaker, the immunisation project officer at the division.

By the way there is one happy note in this saga. We have ended up with a decent sized bar fridge, which, if you decide to go this way having considered the issues, you may feel you need!