Dear Colleagues,
As known that Ice-lined refrigerators are the best choice wherever there is at least 8 hours electricity a day, but what about producing ice-packs for immunization session (e.g. outreach sessions) under the same supply of electricity (=< 8hrs)?
What will be the better decision to make here? maybe consider the combined icelined refrigerator/ freezer (not many options are available on WHO PQS devices catalogue) , or consider a stand- alone deep freezer for ice production (even though the holdover time for the most modules is about 3 hrs) !
Best regards,
This is a very good question. The WHO PQS Devices Catalogue contains a useful decision tree for selecting a suitable energy source for vaccine refrigeration (on page 35), but unfortunately this is not directly applicable when selecting a suitable energy source specifically for ice-pack production. This is because the decision tree does not take into account the user’s specific requirements in terms of holdover time and water-pack freezing capacity. I think it would be great if there were more guidance here.
In general terms, I would recommend using a PQS-prequalified freezer (or combined refrigerator-freezer) to produce ice-packs for outreach BUT ONLY if the device has:
- Sufficient holdover time to match the specific requirements.
- Sufficient water-pack freezing capacity (in terms of both quantity and timeframe) to match the specific requirements, in other words how many and how quickly the ice-packs are required.
Holdover time and water-pack freezing capacity are listed in the PQS Catalogue for every device. As you point out, holdover time for many models may not be sufficient to match specific requirements. I'd be interested if others can suggest more practical guidance around this.
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