UPS flies temperature-sensitive flu vaccines from Louisville to Laos
2012 05 21
- Details
UPS has shipped 375,000 doses of flu vaccines worth US$9 million half way around the world which involved complex, precise planning flying temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals on five flights from Louisville to Laos.
The vaccines, donated by Walgreens, were transported from the company's healthcare distribution centre in Louisville, Kentucky to Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport, after routing through Anchorage, Alaska; Incheon, Seoul; and Shenzhen. They then took 20 hours to get to Vientiane by truck.
Mark Davis, product manager of UPS healthcare logistics, told Atlanta-area Air Cargo World that the big challenge was keeping the vaccines at five degrees Celsius throughout. To overcome this difficulty, the flu vaccines were enclosed in two PharmaPort 360 containers, which are capable of fitting on the smaller-bodied aircraft used in south east Asia.
"UPS Temperature True service with the PharmaPort 360 container was up to the task and performed flawlessly, delivering the vaccine on time, to the right location and in the right condition," he said.
In Laos the vaccines were administered to citizens by healthcare workers from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Mr Davis expects pharma transport will become a bigger business for UPS. The company opened five pharmaceutical facilities last year in the Americas, Europe and Asia, as well as acquiring Italian pharmaceutical logistics company Pieffe at the end of 2011.
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