Attachment

in a liquid, carefully using just the right proportions of each. They might get stuck by a needle during the process. They have to watch out for counterfeit vaccines. They must keep good records of who has been vaccinated. <~?~Insert art 032_Gate_9780593534489_art_r1> A health worker travels several miles each day, often through rigorous terrain, to deliver vaccines to people living in remote locations. There's phenomenal work going on to solve these problems. Vaccinators in India are already using a new portable cooler that prevents the vaccines from freezing if the ice in the cooler is too cold. Researchers are also working on new vaccine formulations that wouldn't need to be kept as cold at every step of the journey. They're reducing shipping costs and saving refrigerator space by making the packages smaller, and they're simplifying the process for health workers by getting rid of powders that have to be mixed with liquid on site. Bar codes printed on the vials will let vaccinators use their cell phones to confirm that the vaccines are legitimate, just as you might scan a QR code to pull up the menu at a restaurant. Advanced methods for delivering vaccines, such as replacing the needle and syringe with a small patch containing microneedles--picture something that looks superficially like the nicotine patches that people use to stop smoking--are making the process safer for everyone, and they might make vaccines easier to deliver too. *** You've probably read (in this book if not somewhere else) that the goal of vaccines is to prevent severe sickness and death, not to prevent infection. But that's not ideal, of course: A perfect vaccine would in fact keep you from getting infected, which would make a big difference