The Sin of Apathy in Cold Chain Handling
By J
Nothing has gone wrong, so nothing will – Murphy’s Law dictates that if something can go wrong, it will eventually go wrong. While we are familiar with this Law, very few of us are proactive enough to plan for the unwelcome eventualities. The same goes for the cold chain handling of medical products, where the apathy toward planning for simple risks, for instance, power blackouts or equipment failures, is often palpable even in management meetings. The resulting loss is usually financially devastating and catastrophically disadvantageous to patients reliant on those products. The bigger risk is when there is either a deliberate intent to distribute cold chain products affected by a temperature excursion emanating from such a breakdown, or even worse, when there is no system to either detect such a breach or support objective decisions regarding the final disposition of these products. Adverse events such as drug reactions, unreliable test results from reagents, and poor response in patients can very easily occur from the consumption of affected products.
