Storing vaccinations have become incredibly easy in today’s day and age, thanks, in part, to the creation of the medical refrigerators and freezers that are used so frequently here in the United States as well as throughout the world as a whole. As a matter of fact, medical refrigerators and freezers come in all different shapes and sizes with some medical refrigerators and freezers able to even fit underneath a counter in the typical pharmacy space, such as is commonplace with the typical pharmacy grade refrigerator and undercounter medical refrigerator or even undercounter lab refrigerator, depending on how it is marketed. Such medical refrigerators and freezers allow for vaccine storage in even the smallest of spaces, something that has certainly helped to increase the overall accessibility of vaccines.

Of course, it is important for these medical refrigerators and freezers to be kept at the right temperature, as only the medical refrigerators and freezers kept at the ideal temperature will be ideal for vaccine storage – or even safe to store vaccines in in the first place. For the average vaccine refrigerator, for instance, it’s ideal to keep the temperature at no higher or lower than 40 degrees Fahrenheit. When it comes to ideal temperatures for medical refrigerators and freezers, the typical vaccine freezer tends to have a little more leeway, as it is only important that the typical lab freezer does not dip below -58 degrees Fahrenheit or exceed 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

And thanks to the spread of medical refrigerators and freezers not just here in the United States but all throughout the world, and thanks to the scientific innovation and scientists that have led to the development of vaccines in the first place, up to two and half million people are saved from an unnecessary death each and every year on a worldwide scale. While vaccines are not yet as widespread as they should be (and the same can be said for medical refrigerators and freezers) as up to 24 million children do not have access to routine and lifesaving vaccines, developed countries have completely eradicated a number of once debilitating and life threatening conditions, improving overall mortality rates and quality of life both quite considerably.

Take, for instance, polio. Polio was once an incredibly debilitating condition that many parents and children alike very much feared. Polio could cause a great deal of physical disabilities that ended up being life long for all too many people and could even lead to death in severe cases. Before the polio vaccine, there wasn’t even any really good way to prevent against polio.

Nowadays, however, things are much different indeed. Here in the United States, more than 93% of all toddlers (those children who fall between 19 months and 35 months of age) have currently received their polio vaccine. In the past, this rate of vaccination has been even higher, though it has fallen somewhat in recent years. Still, however, polio is considered to be completely eradicated from the United States, though it is still quite present in other parts of the world, something that the growing access to vaccinations will be able to change in the years that are to come.

Measles related deaths have also fallen in quite a significant way even in recent years. Back in the year of 2000, for instance, there were more than half of a million measles related deaths over the course of just one year. By the time that the year of 2014 had rolled around, however, measles deaths had dropped by as much has 79%. This can all be attributed to the widespread access to the MMR vaccines (which covers measles, mumps, and rubella) all throughout the country.

At the end of the day, vaccines and access to these vaccinations has already been immensely lifesaving not just here in the United States but truly on a global scale. Fortunately, vaccine can protect against so many different conditions and diseases that were once just accepted to be commonplace, keeping children and adults healthy.