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Thermal shipper protects H1N1 vaccines for Chicago

To prepare for a possible H1N1 pandemic, the Chicago Dept. of Public Health employed 100 insulated shippers to maintain refrigerated vials used to deliver 100,000 doses of the vaccine.

Packaging vaccines. Dr. Suzet McKinney talks with CDPH staff about handling of the H1N1 vaccine as the staff packs Greenbox cont
Packaging vaccines. Dr. Suzet McKinney talks with CDPH staff about handling of the H1N1 vaccine as the staff packs Greenbox cont

The rapid spread of the H1N1 influenza virus led the World Health Organization last June to declare that H1N1 was a global pandemic. The Chicago Dept. of Public Health’s (CDPH) Preparedness and Emergency Response Program acted swiftly to protect the public, particularly those people in the city who were deemed most susceptible to H1N1, and those unable to receive the vaccine via private healthcare providers.

A key step taken by the CDPH was to purchase 100 Greenbox™ thermal management system shippers from Entropy Solutions. The shippers are used at CDPH’s central warehouse, which receives glass vials of the liquid H1N1 vaccine. The federal government purchased vaccines from different drug manufacturers, then sent them to CDPH through third-party shippers.

Each Greenbox contains 360 vials, with each vial containing 10 individual patient doses. CDPH shipped the treatment to more than 100 clinics within Chicago, where nurses or physicians drew the liquid into a needle from the glass vial. Between last October and January of this year, more than 100,000 citizens were inoculated against the influenza virus.

“We first heard about the Greenbox when we began planning for our response to what we thought would be a fall wave of the H1N1 outbreak,” recalls Suzet McKinney, DrPH, deputy commissioner of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Emergency Response for CDPH.

“We knew that we would have a great deal of responsibility with disseminating the H1N1 vaccine across the city. We also knew that in implementing a mass-vaccination campaign, we would likely be set up in facilities that did not have or could not provide large-scale refrigeration capacity,” she adds.

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