By Alithea De Jesus
Photos courtesy of Ms. Jannette Jakosalem, Chief Business Officer, Zuellig Pharma Corporation
As the demand for cold storage facilities rises to ensure that all COVID19 vaccines are properly received, handled, and distributed, ZUELLIG PHARMA CORPORATION, a leading healthcare services provider in Asia, has ramped up its cold chain capacity in the Philippines from different manufacturers and with different temperature requirements.
Corollary to this, the National Task Force continues the assessments of the cold storage capacity in the country in anticipation of the upcoming arrival of COVID-19 vaccines from various manufacturers.
Photo from LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jannettejakosalem/
In the statement sent to THEPHILBIZNEWS, Jannette Jakosalem, Chief Business Officer, Zuellig Pharma Corporation said, “We have ordered 10 additional ultra-low freezers, on top of the 14 already deployed through our network in anticipation of the storage and distribution demands of COVID-19 vaccines in the Philippines.”
The Taskforce officials led by Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez Jr., Chief Implementer of the country’s national policy against Covid-19 outbreak, and Department of Health Secretary Francisco Duque recently visited Zuellig Pharma Corporation’s facilities in Parañaque.
Photo from https://www.zuelligpharma.com
“Zuellig Pharma has played an active role during the pandemic by undertaking urgent deliveries of influenza (flu) vaccines as well as conducting mass flu vaccination exercises. We are honoured and excited to engage with the Philippine government to explore ways in which we can support measures to address this current crisis and help execute the national COVID-19 vaccination programme,” said Maikel Kuijpers, Chief Executive and Area Director, Zuellig Pharma Corporation.
“Over our long history of supplying healthcare products during crises such as world wars, economic crises or natural disasters, we have learned best practices that we believe are applicable to the current COVID-19 pandemic, which I hope we can share,” he added.
Zuellig Pharma has been involved in the supply chain management of almost every major vaccine in the Philippines through its large scale and fully validated, global pharma-grade cold chain facilities.
Its nationwide cold rooms, with temperatures of 2° to 8° Celsius, are located across various warehouses in Santa Rosa, Laguna; Sun Valley, Parañaque; Cebu and Davao, and can store up to 629 million vaccine doses. Its walk-in freezers can store up to 52 million doses at -15° to -25° Celsius. The company is also increasing its ultra-cold freezer capacity to 24 freezers that can store over seven million doses at temperatures as low as -70° to -80° Celsius, and can further ramp up this capacity if needed.
The company’s cold chain capabilities include the eZCooler solution, an environmentally-friendly innovation that extends the storage time of temperature-sensitive products in transit from two days with a traditional system, to five days.
Kuijpers also shared about Zuellig Pharma’s COVID-19 digital care platform, eZVax, developed in partnership with Accenture and Microsoft that acts as a centralised hub coordinating and linking both stakeholders and processes through the whole mass vaccination program. eZVax allows checking of eligibility, pre-screening, and scheduling of vaccination of patients including date, time, and location. It has administration support with recording of patient and vaccine details, scheduling of second dose when necessary, and generation of digital health passport or vaccination card. The platform will also generate centralised adverse event reporting.
“Our system features powerful data and analytics tools that allow us to drive efficiencies through the process whilst providing real-time dashboards and status reports,” he added.
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