BitingTheDust

Maintaining the cold chain is difficult out bush. I wrote in August about the high temperatures reached in the planes transporting our pharmaceuticals. Power failures are regular in many remote communities and can lead to failure of the cold chain rendering the vaccines and other refrigerated items unusable. Over time I have built up a reasonable database of various drug stabilities at higher temperatures. However many of these studies do not reflect the temperatures to which these drugs may be exposed to.

These community generator power failures often necessitates removing these drugs in a safe and approved manner from these communities and replacing them quickly. This often means items transported from another community.

Some emergency missions to overseas disasters have used large portable fridges. However these have needed careful monitoring with certain drugs placed in certain areas and adjustments to the thermostat if numbers of items are removed. Whilst these are good for setting up a remote emergency clinic they do require some specialised knowledge to maintain the correct storage for various drugs.

I have been trialling a new portable refrigerator. It has a volume of 25 litres which allows us to transfer adequate quantities of drugs urgently to a clinic until bulk supplies arrive in a week or two by plane.

Twinbird Vaccine Fridge

We obtained the Twinbird from Rollex Group Australia. While considerably more expensive than say an Engel, it performs very well.

I have been using it for several months monitoring temperatures with a third party data logger. The temperature monitoring and alarm system seem quite accurate. The fridge does use a different sort of cooling system than the compressor style, allowing more accurate temperature control. There are two baskets inside the refrigerator so there is no direct contact by the vaccine or blood products with the sides where they may freeze.

The power cord could be more robust, and it requires an optional DC converter to run inside on AC power (Engel etc require just a separate cord to plug into the unit). It is light, but seems quite solid and has handled rough bush trips with ease.. I would have liked some way to be able to lock the fridge. It also now comes with a printer option for temperature recording and I will be including this option in future purchases as we expand our on-lands logistics capability.

But then I think we have it easy compared to some locations around the world! This is the Vaccine Fridge CFS49IS System with CFS standing for “Camel Fridge System”.

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Welcome to another Pleasant Sunday Afternoon.
I am unsure if this is best played by oboe or flute.

Musical Kangaroo

Well the drive up the Stuart Highway can be boring to some.

Today we have an extra part to our Pleasant Sunday Afternoon. And it’s for free. Actually, I am unsure if I can even give it away! Those who have read my Top Ten list may have seen a comment from a transmogrified Welshman sandnsurf about wanting a Top Eleven rather than a Top Ten list. I am always one to try and satisfy my readers (don’t push it!).

HighHeels but not in the desert

Ok. I admit it. From the mulch you can see it is not in the desert. And that is a blackberry device and not a satellite phone so it also can’t be me! But the picture may give something else away.

It is possibly a bit pretentious as I have only been blogging since August. And regularly blogging since mid December with only 71 posts. But everyone else has been doing it.

Consider it showing my newer subscribers some earlier “quality” posts.

So my ten most popular posts are:

1. “A Drive in The Country: It took this truck driver and his truck 18 hours. Bogged three times in sand. That’s a lot of wheels to dig out. And some pretty big holes. I guess that is something to look forward to as I drive out next week”.

2. When Remote Australia and Mining Australia meet: This surprised me coming so high in the ranking. My view on how mining companies in Australia seem to disregard and damage the remote communities near their sites.

3. A Little Bit of Rain: With plenty of photos and video it showed what Central Australia can be like after rain.

4. Remote Weather Report was a report I sent out to people who may be travelling in our area which I later posted. Describes what can happen when heavy rain hits - particularly for a very mobile population

5. Can Bush Tucker Reduce the Burden of Heart Disease and Diabetes? Here I commented on an Article in the West Australian Newspaper and talked about food and prices out bush.

6. Kunmarnanya my Lord, Kunmarnanya. I’m known as Robbo almost everywhere I go. I started using my nickname for cultural reasons. This explains why.

7. A Snake in the Hand is Worth…. is a little story about a snake on my fence: I race to the gate and instead of placing my hand on the expected tubular frame it landed on something sinuous, scaly and muscular.

8. Oodnadatta Track is a Pleasant Sunday Afternoon story with a picture of a stop sign in the desert. Believe me. That is all that is there.

9. You Have Peak Hour Traffic and I Have…… was a video looking at the traffic obstacles I have on my way to work. Camels and lots of them.

10. CRANA Opens its Doors where I commented on Council of Remote Area Nurses of Australia opening membership to other professions with some comments on other bodies representing those out bush.

Well that’s it for another year!

Yeah, I use Twitter. It is a terrific medium. I get to speak to specialists in their field around the world every day of the week. These include Aussie Emergency Physicians that work at hospitals that take our patients.

But the best use of it I have seen was by Mr Onthemoon over the Christmas period. I am unsure if he was trying to entice followers, perhaps it was for altruistic reasons, but he went crazy and made 90 avatars in 90 hours. He has even written about his extravaganztacular: My twitter avatar adventure meltdown extravaganztacular to gain cheap publicity. You know him as the cartoonist at Crikey with FirstDogOnTheMoon

It started as this white board (me upper right corner) and ended up as this along with 16 million new followers (his words).
If you like what you have seen of him so far take a look here.
Oh, you might have noticed I received an avatar. We are still discussing which one is me.

And this is going in as a Pleasant Sunday Afternoon though it is Thursday. That’s the good thing about having your own blog!