Correspondents' Correspondence Freezing Out Disease

...Specialists are now working on cheap energy devices for keeping the vaccines alive during transit—often on horseback—through primitive areas...

...The situation may be on the verge of changing, though...

...Under the sponsorship of the WHO, scientists at Strath-clyde University, here in Glasgow, have come up with an ingenious technical solution to the refrigeration problem...

...The delicate biological substances that go into vaccines must, however, be kept at temperatures between zero and 10 degrees centigrade from the time of manufacture until they are administered...

...In the energy-impoverished countries of the Third World, refrigerating vaccines has hitherto stymied engineers...

...Extensive field tests have already been carried out in Africa and Asia, and more than a dozen machines have been ordered by Kenya, Botswana, India, and Indonesia...

...Most vaccine refrigerators are produced and really designed for operation in the developed countries, where temperatures tend to be cool and supplies of electricity plentiful...

...Roughly stated, the principle means that one can produce a cooling effect by evaporating liquid ammonia and absorbing the resulting gas into silver nitrate...

...The spread of disease is therefore so commonplace in certain parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America that many health workers, political leaders and even parents are "numbed into accepting this continuing tragedy," according to Ralph H. Henderson, who is the present manager of the World Health Organization's (WHO) immunization program...

...They are light, easily portable and can be run from small wood or charcoal burning stoves or paraffin burners...

...A cold box has already been designed that will keep its contents cool for up to seven days without any fresh energy supply...

...Less than 10 per cent of the 80 million children born each year in the poorer countries are at present receiving any immunization services at all...

...WHO officials are hoping this, combined with the ice-making machine, will eventually make it possible to im-immunize every child in the world—not merely those who live in industrialized countries.—Thomas Land...

...Aware that they had to restrict themselves to a device employing the most rudimentary energy sources, the Glasgow researchers sought a clue in their country's own scientific past...

...In the tropical belt countries, in particular, virtually no facilities exist for preventing the vaccines from becoming inert through exposure to heat...

...The Scottish scientists say that their equipment, currently being turned out only at the university, is soon likely to be manufactured under license in some of the developing countries...

...They are among an estimated 5 million who succumb annually to such diseases as diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, measles, polio and tuberculosis—maladies that have been virtually eliminated or brought under control in the industrialized world through the use of vaccines...

...Anticipating the introduction of the new ice machines into the developing countries, the WHO is also trying to improve vaccine distribution systems...

...one that promises a major health breakthrough for the world's most poverty-stricken countries...

...Relatively sophisticated devices of this kind, using great amounts of energy, have proved to be inefficient under the conditions prevailing throughout most of the Third World...

...And the consequent lack of adequate and cheap refrigeration has been one of the major reasons for the failure to carry out massive immunization campaigns where they are so desperately needed...

...In fact, they went back over a century to the work of the Scottish scientist Michael Faraday, who in 1824 discovered the principle of intermittent absorption...

...Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS Freezing Out Disease Glasgow—For want of nothing more than a simple ice-making machine, countless children are dying each year in the underdeveloped countries...

...The machines can be operated by someone with the skill-level of a driver...

...Thanks to Faraday," says Ted North, head of the Strathclyde team of scientists, "we are now building small ice-making machines based on that principle, capable of producing a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of ice in two and a half hours...