Proper Vaccine Refrigeration Vital to Putting Disease on Ice

1/26/2010 9:00 PM EST 

Every year, billions of dollars worth of vaccines are shipped to thousands of medical providers across the country, and every year doctors must dispose of tens of millions of dollars worth of those vaccines because they became too warm or too cold while in storage. Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), with funding from and in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have completed the first of a series of tests to determine best practices for properly storing and monitoring the temperature of refrigerated vaccines.