The United Parcel Service (UPS) Foundation has donated cold chain equipment to the government of Malawi as the country continues its fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is understood that the 30 freezers can each store up to 6,000 vaccine doses, and maintain temperatures as low as -80 degrees Celsius.
The freezers, equipped with uninterrupted power supply, can be plugged into a cigarette lighter receptacle in a vehicle for transportation.
UPS has also donated 50 portable cold chain boxes with a capacity to carry up to 6,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine maintained at two-to-eight degrees Celsius for four to five days without electricity.
‘This donation also represents the type of public-private partnership that both the U.S. and Malawi governments will continue to pursue in the fight against Covid-19’, the U.S. Ambassador to Malawi, Robert Scott, said at the Ministry of Health in Lilongwe.
Scott commended the government of Malawi for expanding Covid-19 vaccine options available to Malawians.
‘Today’s contribution of the ultra-cold chain equipment will prepare Malawi to receive the Pfizer vaccine and other approved vaccines that require ultra-cold chain’, he added.
‘This will enable the government of Malawi to safely receive, deploy, and minimise loss of the Pfizer vaccine and other public health solutions that will require ultra-cold chain storage in the future’.
The country’s Minister of Health and Population, Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda, said the third wave of Covid-19 pandemic had shown why the government of Malawi must do everything it takes to protect lives, jobs, businesses, and the economy.
The minister added that the Ministry of Health and its partners have resolved to implement the National Vaccine Deployment Plan by further strengthening management systems and making the vaccines available.
‘Pfizer vaccine requires ultra-cold chain infrastructure to maintain potency at temperatures not above -80 degrees Celsius’, she said.
‘Currently Malawi does not have these storage facilities. It is against this background the U.S. government, through the United Parcel Service (UPS) Foundation, is donating ultra-cold chain equipment and other cold chain pieces of apparatus necessary to receive, store and distribute the Pfizer vaccines in Malawi’.
Source: Nyasa Times
Photo source: Africa CDC
