The Cost Of A Broken Vaccine Cold Chain Part Two, Financial Cost

When officials in Washington, D.C. consider their annual budgets, they must face a chilling fact that globally nearly half of all vaccines are lost when exposure to unsafe temperature ranges cause the vaccines to lose their efficacy. A majority of these losses are due to failure within the cold chain distribution process. Most states do not even know how much of their budget is spent to cover the costs related to cold chain failure because it goes unmonitored, unreported and unmeasured. They do, however, know the personal and economic burden that a flu epidemic brings. In the U.S. alone, individual states have estimated their own losses at over $3 million a year; a number that only reflects cases reported and is most likely significantly higher.