The Cold Chain

Posted on | October 24, 2007 | Comments Off on The Cold Chain

A critically important, but little known, concept for global health care

In just a few weeks an international conference will be held in Copenhagen that will draw the world’s most influential health organizations and health-related businesses. But they’ll be discussing something most people have never heard of. It’s called “The Cold Chain” – the global network of temperature controlled vehicles and storage sites that is reliably linked together and monitored to assure protection against the negative effects of heat.

When it comes to solving a medical mystery like SARS or assuring the quality of a multinational clinical trial, refrigeration is essential. And it’s also a major factor when we transport any number of health-related materials over wide distances – notably vaccines and substances such as insulin.

The problem is that in an increasingly interdependent world, in which global health concerns and activities are linked, some countries are having difficulty keeping up with their part of the Cold Chain. China is a good example – lagging far behind in its capacity to provide refrigeration. In this week’s show I take a look at the consequences of this situation on our health care future. To learn more, watch this week’s video (embedded with this blog post) or read the full transcript of this week’s program, below. As always, please tell me how you feel about this issue.

Mike Magee