Background: Knowing the wastage rate helps in assessing vaccine wastage and relative magnitude of its various causes helps to target efforts in reduce this wastage. Area specific wastage rate is useful in tailoring the vaccine vial size. Research question: What is the vaccine wastage in a primary care setting in rural India? Methods: A record based descriptive study was carried out in an immunization clinic of rural health centre in South India. All childhood vaccinations between 1 st April 2012 and 31 st March 2013 were included in the study. Number of doses issued and number of children vaccinated were obtained from the registers maintained at the rural health centre. Vaccine wastage rates and wastage factor were calculated. Results: A total of 5013 vaccinations (DPT, OPV, measles, MMR, and pentavalent, hep B, TT) were provided. Wastage rate for liquid vaccines was 3.4% and for lyophilized vaccines 28.2% among vaccines provided under national immunization schedule, wastage was highest for measles (46.5%). Conclusions: All vaccines except measles had wastage within the limits proposed by World Health Organization. Wastage rates have to be calculated routinely and considered during vaccine procurement.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.