Emergency Refrigeration Takes on New Meaning in Healthcare

Picture of Healthcare Refrigeration
26-Jul-2018

Most of what we do is related to providing emergency and temporary cold storage for food service operations. We're talking caterers, restaurants, and the like. But there are a lot more uses for emergency refrigeration than just keeping food cold. In healthcare, emergency refrigeration could mean the difference between life and death.

Many of the medicines we all benefit from must be kept cold for extended periods of time. So healthcare facilities have industrial scale refrigeration and freezer capacity. The walk-in chiller at any UK hospital would rival what you might find in a five-star restaurant. Unfortunately, hospital chillers are just as susceptible to break downs.

Real-Life Problems without Refrigeration

If you don't fully understand how important reliable refrigeration is to healthcare in the West, consider some of the real-life problems faced by people living in Third World countries. The BBC recently published an article describing a brand-new medicine that could be used to save lives during labour and delivery. This new medicine has been developed in response to a lack of reliable refrigeration in so many parts of the world.

According to the BBC, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends mothers in Third World countries receive an injection of oxytocin in order to prevent severe bleeding during delivery. The problem is that oxytocin has to be kept near freezing from the moment it is produced until the moment it is used. There are many places in the world where this just isn't possible. So researchers set about developing a new drug that doesn't need to be kept cold.

Back here in the UK, we use a lot of medicines that need to be kept at varying temperatures. It's not enough for a hospital or healthcare clinic to have just one refrigeration unit. Several units are necessary to keep the right drugs at the right temperatures. What if one of those units goes down? A potentially life-threatening situation could arise without an adequate supply of the medicines normally stored in that unit.

The Importance of Emergency Refrigeration

The BBC story is yet another reminder to Icecool Trailers of just how important emergency refrigeration really is. Emergency response is a big part of what we do. A customer may call first thing in the morning to report the failure of an important walk-in chiller. Our job is to get a replacement unit out to that customer as quickly as we can.

If the customer happens to be a restaurant, we will work as hard as we can to prevent as much loss as possible. But if the customer happens to be a healthcare facility, the situation suddenly becomes a lot more urgent.

Icecool Trailers has offered emergency refrigeration throughout the Greater London area for more than two decades. Should your refrigerators or freezers ever go down, don't hesitate for a moment to contact us. One call is all it takes to get one of our units out to your location within hours.

Sources:

BBC – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44617525

Got questions? Call 01635 250 950 or send us a message