•The store has the capacity to store more than six months of vaccine stock for the country at any given time
•The national vaccines store has the capability to store 130,000 litres of vaccines under temperatures of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius - that's required for the Covid vaccine.
Image: MAGDALINE SAYA
For Earnest Some, despite the 8am to 5pm working hours at the Central Vaccines Store, he is always on duty, always alert even when he's away.
The member of the immunisation programme staff has technology and devices enabling him to visualise what's happening inside in real time.
Located in Kitengela, Kajiado county, the store was built in 2013 with support of the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) with an aim of to expand storage and handling capacity for vaccines by the Health ministry.
On Tuesday night, the store received an additional 1.02 million Covid-19 vaccines from the Covax facility.
The store has the capacity to store more than six months of vaccine stock in many cold and freezer rooms.
Every year, the facility handles vaccines worth more than Sh6 billion.
These include childhood vaccines for tuberculosis, polio, pentavalent, rotavirus, pneumococcal, measles and rubella.
The vaccines against the human papilloma virus that causes cervical cancer are also stored at the facility.
“This is the central store. When we pick the vaccines they come here before they are distributed to our nine regional hubs, so anything called vaccine is found here,” Some told the Star.
The national vaccines store has the capability to store 130,000 litres of vaccines at two to eight degrees Celsius. It can store 14,400 litres of vaccines at -30 degrees Celsius.
The AstraZenecaa Covid vaccine is stored at two to eight degrees Celsius, the temperature in a typical home refrigerator, making it easier to store.n.
The vaccines are distributed quarterly to more than 8,000 health facilities in the counties, through the nine regional depots at Nairobi, Eldoret, Kakamega, Kisumu, Nyeri, Nakuru, Meru, Garissa and Mombasa.
Image: MAGDALINE SAYA
The cold rooms and freezer rooms are equipped with both external and digital temperature displays and remote temperature monitoring devices. They are web-based, SMS-enabled so staff can monitor conditions in real time from anywhere in the country.
If vaccines go out of normal range, an alert goes off and emergency staff rectifies the situation.
The facility has a workshop where repair works for cold chain equipment are undertaken as well as capacity-building for medical engineering technologists
The facility also has dry storage space of more than 1000 square metres "This infrastructure is going to be key in deployment of the Covid-19 vaccines,” Health CS Mutahi Kagwe said.
The facility has a standby generator in case of any power outage so temperatures are maintained at all times.
“Leaving nothing to chance, it also has in place a remote temperature monitoring alert system that is critical in maintaining the quality of vaccines,” Kagwe said.
Due to the large volumes of costly vaccines stored at the depot, systems monitor virtually every key element even when employees are not there.
“One visual display can tell the temperature but what if we are not here because we don’t stay here?We have switches and screen to see who entered the cold room," Some says.
Each door to a cold room is fitted with a time switch showing at what time the room was opened.
The facility has two gadgets, one inside the store and one in the office. Known as the Remote Temperature Monitoring System, the one in the office sends an SMS when there is an alarm
Some said the web-based system enables them to track from wherever they are in the world as long as they have access to the internet, a laptop, tablet or a phone.
“We are actually able to see what the temperatures are and we are able to see whether there is power in the site. When there is an alarm condition it sends us an email and an sms to tell us that there is a problem in the site and then we will respond to it,” he said.
The alarm will go off until there is a response to the problem. If nobody responds, the alarms escalate.
Some also says that the store supplies vaccines to all facilities, whether government, private or faith based.
Image: MAGDALINE SAYA
The facilities must submit reports at the end of a certain period detailing how the vaccines were used for accountability purposes. All vaccines collected from the store are to be administered to the public free of charge, regardless of where the vaccine is administered.
“There are vaccines that private facilities buy themselves but the common vaccines that are in the Kenya immunisation schedules are all here. If you go to a private facility you will be given the BCG jab but they will not charge you for that but if you ask for a vaccine that is not in the schedule that they didn’t get from us then they will charge you for that.”
The ministry has said the existing cold chain capacity will be extended at health facility level to enable them handle Covid-19 vaccines alongside the existing childhood vaccines.
The Health ministry said the the government has scaled up coverage of immunisation services from 50 per cent to more than 90 per cent of the health facilities in the country.
Similarly, 290 subcounty vaccine depots have been set up. A national and eight regional modern vaccine depots have been built.
(Edited by V. Graham)