SERA AND VACCINES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18444, 4 January 1922, Page 6

SERA AND VACCINES

Health departments AGENCY. ENSURING FRESH SUPPLIES. Reference to the stocking of sera and vaccines, is contained in the last number of the Now'Zealand Journal of Health and Hospitals. ■ " With the exception of such vaccines (0.g,, influenza vaccine and autogenous vaccines) as are manufactured by the various Government bacteriologists, and can be obtained therefrom (it states), the Department of Health hag arranged to undertake the agency for New Zealand of the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, whose products it has been carrying and distributing through the hospital boards for some time past. These products ate obtainable, therefore, only through the Health Department, but to facilitate their distribution the department has arranged to supply hospital boards therewith, from whom medical practitioners can obtain their supplies at the prices set out in the printed price list issued t>y the commonwealth laboratories. Medical practitioners requiring these products, therefore, should apply to the boards of their districts therefor, and if the boards have not the sera in stock, then it .an te supplied by the department. Medical men should, however, avoid mailing it a practice of applying to the department instead of to the hospital board, with the exception of those in the Wellington hospital district, who can be supplied by the head office of the Health Department instead of by the Wellington Hospital Board. “The department’s object in stocking, these sera is to ensure that an adequate and fresh supply of sera is always available; and by keeping the main supplies in Wellington under proper conditions of cool storage it can avoid the loss and expense that resulted in the past from stocks being held in varying quantities throughout the dominion, and the consequent necessity for much 'writing-off of stale and expired stocks. The present system enables stocks to be held by hospital boards sufficient only for the immediate requirements of their institutions or of medical men in their districts. , These stocks can te replenished by the department, which, moreover, can always obtain fresh supplies within a week from the laboratories in Australia, and therefore there is no danger of stocks either being exhausted or being held in such largo quantities ns to become stale, and so have to be destroyed. “Though the department does not refuse to supply ohefiiists or others with sera, it is \pointed out that there is apparently nothing to te gained by a chemist, possibly in a small town with only one medical man as a client, having to hold stocks of sera whidh may or may not be required, and >n the latter eventuality having to te written off, in which case tne chemist would have to bear the loss himself unless he covered himself against loss by charging a sufficiently high price for the sera. Under the present conditions the deprp-tmont bears the loss, if any, in regard to expired stocks, but avoids such contingency .owing to the facilities it has for disposing of and renewing its stocks. ** ‘ ■ “The department is not actuated by a desire to make a profit or preventipg legitimate profits being made. In assuming the control of the sera supplies it is actuated by a desire, primarily, tp assure supplies of bacteriological products; secondly, that such supplies should bo always fresh and of unvarying potency and, finally, to , ovoid the economic waste that has • occurred in tihe yiast through the inevitable destruction of state, stocks. Any profits to be made the department shares with the hospital boards.”