Resources

Accidental interruption of the cold chain storage of health products can create problems such as spoilage, changes in the appearance, taste, or smell, growth of harmful bacteria, or lost potency. As part of PATH’s work in supply systems and equipment, this presentation provides insights into the biggest challenges in the cold chain management of temperature-sensitive health commodities in Primary Health Care (PHC) as well as key opportunities and potential risks with integrating non-vaccine products into existing vaccine cold chains. A review of literature and a stakeholder survey has revealed key recommendations, including improving the availability and quality of supply chain data to increase awareness and support policies for investing in strengthening the cold chain for essential medicines and diagnostics, improving guidelines for temperature management and monitoring of temperature-sensitive non-vaccine health products, and improving the availability and reliability of cold storage equipment for equitable distribution and service delivery.

This joint capacity statement showcases how PATH works to unite the historically siloed sectors of primary health care (PHC) and epidemic preparedness and response (EPR) to build more resilient health systems. By combining PATH's technical capacities and experience in preventive health services, surveillance, data management, and response, we are able to more effectively partner with countries to address infectious disease epidemics, impacts from climate-change, antimicrobial resistance, and other emerging barriers to health equity.

In 2020, Ghana switched from using ROTARIX® to ROTAVAC® in its national immunization program. PATH worked with Ghana Health Service and the University of Ghana to analyze the economic implications of this switch. These four fact sheets explore the key results of these analyses, collectively providing a case study on Ghana’s rotavirus vaccine product switch.(Manuscript pending submission to a peer-reviewed journal.)

In India, PATH supports the development of user-centric digital health tools for effective data management in human milk banks across India. This fact sheet details one such intervention which records, processes, and analyzes the end-to-end process of human milk banking

This factsheet focuses on the development of a low cost, standalone, preassembled device to help babies withrespiratory distress syndrome: the bubble continuous positive airway pressure (bCPAP) kit. This low-cost bCPAP device does not require assembly at the point of care and is designed to provide bCPAP therapy to preterm newborns with respiratory distress syndrome without requiring a power source (i.e., electricity or battery) or medical-grade compressed air.