International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | February 2023 | Vol 10 | Issue 2 Page 799 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Pritwani S et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2023 Feb;10(2):799-802 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article Assessment of cold chain and vaccine management practices in cold chain points of Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh: a cross-sectional study Sabhya Pritwani 1 *, M. Jawed Quereishi 2 INTRODUCTION Immunization is an essential part of primary health care which acts as a shield for children from preventable life threatening conditions, significantly improving child morbidity and mortality. 1 In Chhattisgarh, coverage of fully immunized children and Infant mortality rate has increased from 76.4% and 53 per 1000 live births in NFHS-4 to 79.7% and 44.3 per 1000 live births in NFHS- 5. 2,3 Increasing vaccine coverage depends upon strengthening of multiple factors such as micro-planning, cold-chain and logistics management, monitoring/supportive supervision, and community mobilization. Cold chain point and vaccine logistic management are the backbone of immunization. 4,5 Studies have shown that poor infrastructure, poor maintenance, lack of knowledge among cold chain handlers and inadequate monitoring leads to the vaccine ineffectiveness and cold chain failure. 4 Literature revealed that 15 children died in a remote village of South Sudan in the year 2017 due to sepsis/toxicity. This was caused by the administration of contaminated vaccine, not following the cold chain protocols, and undertrained vaccination team. 6 Hence, enhancing the quality and management of cold chain infrastructure is critical especially in this pandemic era where equitable access to safe and efficacious vaccines will help in preventing the spread of infectious diseases. With this background, the present study was done to assess the vaccine management, availability of cold chain equipment (CCE), vaccine storage practices, monitoring of cold chain and knowledge regarding ABSTRACT Background: To maintain the immunization effectiveness, and uninterrupted availability of vaccine functional cold chain is required. This can be achieved by continuous monitoring and supervision. The objective was to assess the functionality and monitoring of cold chain points of Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh. Methods: A cross-sectional study conducted in the month of January 2021 in 15 old and new cold chain points, which were selected randomly from all the five blocks of district. Block level “supportive supervision of cold chain and vaccine management” checklist was used to collect the data. The data was presented in frequency and percentages. Results: The key findings were shortage of staff, placement of cold chain equipment and ice packs not as per the guidelines, irregular monthly review of temperature, and periodic monitoring with available documentation. Conclusions: There were shortfalls in the basic components of cold chain which requires immediate attention from the officials. Keywords: Cold chain management, Cold chain point, Cold chain system, Immunization, Supportive supervision, Vaccine management 1 District Health Society-Bilaspur, National Health Mission-Chhattisgarh, Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, India 2 Department of Health and Family Welfare, National Health Mission-Chhattisgarh, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India Received: 27 December 2022 Accepted: 17 January 2023 *Correspondence: Dr. Sabhya Pritwani, E-mail: sabhyapritwani94@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20230241