As soon as vaccines are licensed for use, the world will need as many syringes as doses of vaccine, said UNICEF on Monday.
To begin preparations, this
year, UNICEF will stockpile 520 million syringes in its warehouses, part of a
larger plan to have a billion syringes ready for use through 2021, to guarantee
initial supply and help ensure that syringes arrive before vaccines are
distributed.
During 2021, assuming there are
enough doses of COVID-19 vaccines, UNICEF expects to deliver around a billion
syringes to support COVID-19 vaccination efforts on top of the 620 million
syringes the agency will purchase for other vaccination programmes, against
other diseases such as measles, typhoid and more.
Historic undertaking
“Vaccinating the world against
COVID-19 will be one of the largest mass undertakings in human history, and we
will need to move as quickly as the vaccines can be produced,” said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director.
“In order to move fast later,
we must move fast now. By the end of the year, we will already have over half a
billion syringes pre-positioned where they can be deployed quickly and cost
effectively. That’s enough syringes to wrap around the world one and a half
times.”
In line with the longstanding
collaboration between the two partners, the global vaccine alliance Gavi, will
reimburse UNICEF for the cost of syringes and safety boxes, which will then be
used for the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility (COVAX Facility) and for
other Gavi-funded immunization programmes, if needed
‘Safety boxes’ for disposal
Besides syringes, UNICEF is
also buying 5 million safety boxes so that used syringes and needles can be disposed
in a safe manner by personnel at health facilities, reducing the risk of needle
stick injuries and blood borne diseases.
Every safety box carries 100
syringes. Accordingly, UNICEF said it was “bundling” the syringes with safety
boxes to ensure enough safety boxes are available to go along with the
syringes.
Injection equipment such as
syringes and safety boxes have a shelf life of five years, the agency notes.
Lead-times for such equipment are also long as these items are bulky and need
to be transported by sea freight. Vaccines, which are heat sensitive, are
normally transported more quickly by air.
As the key procurement
coordinator for Gavi, UNICEF is already the largest single vaccine buyer in the
world, procuring more than 2 billion doses of vaccines annually for routine
immunization and outbreak response on behalf of nearly 100 countries. Every
year,
UNICEF provides vaccines for
almost half of the world’s children and procures and supplies around 600-800
million syringes for regular immunization programmes.
Huge increase
COVID-19 vaccines will likely
treble or quadruple that number, depending on the number that are ultimately
produced and secured by UNICEF.
“Over two decades, Gavi has
helped an additional 822 million children from the world’s most vulnerable
countries access critical, life-saving vaccines”, said Seth
Berkley, CEO of Gavi. “This would not have been possible without our
partnership with UNICEF, and it is this same collaboration that will be
essential to Gavi’s work with the COVAX Facility.”
To make sure that vaccines are
transported and stored at the right temperature, UNICEF, along with the World
Health Organization (WHO), is also mapping out existing cold chain equipment
and storage capacity – in the private as well as public sector – and preparing
necessary guidance for countries to receive vaccines.
“We are doing everything we can
to deliver these essential supplies efficiently, effectively and at the right
temperature, as we already do so well all over the world,” Ms. Fore said.
Even prior to the COVID-19
pandemic, with support from Gavi and in partnership with WHO, UNICEF has been
upgrading the existing cold chain equipment across health facilities in
countries to ensure that vaccines remain safe and effective throughout their
journey.
Fridges boost health services
Since 2017, over 40,000
cold-chain fridges, including solar fridges, have been installed across health
facilities, mostly in Africa, said the agency.
And in many countries, UNICEF
is promoting solar technologies to help countries maintain supply chains.
In South
Sudan, the least electrified country in the world, where temperatures
frequently exceed 40 degrees Celsius, more than 700 health facilities have been
equipped by UNICEF with solar power fridges – around 50 per cent of all
facilities nationwide.
