Attentive nurse and cooperative patient,

 Primary Health Center No. 11, Balikesir, Turkey

The French poet and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once famously said, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Such was my experience on the WHO / PDA Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Management Course on Wheels. Read my review and comentary here.

China's success is vital to 21st century drug manufacturing. But is it too much to ask too soon for a country still trying to find its way in the new world economy? I only had to look as far as Chicago's lakefront to find a role model, as the June installment of Advanced Degrees in Contract Pharma explains...

 

My column in the May issue of Contract Pharma explores how some archaic technologies, including the Zeer and the Crosley IcyBall, are getting a 21st century makeover.

On a recent flight from Istanbul to Chicago, I noticed a man across the aisle from me in seat 10D, frantically fumbling with his laptop computer. He was clearly agitated that his work was interrupted when he was unable to receive a wi-fi signal — comfortably hurling through the stratosphere as if by magic — at 600 miles per hour, 38,000 feet over the mountains of western Bulgaria. He whines when the flight attendant tells him there is no ice available for his scotch and soda, and he later commented to the woman next to him that his dinner salad was warm and wilted. He would, in less than half a day, be on the other side of the planet among all the modern creature-comforts he has come to take for granted, and all would be right in his world. Incensed by his current state of inconvenience, he grumbles.

Meantime, somewhere in a dry and dusty Nigerian village, a woman prepares a Zeer, two earthen pots the same shape but of different sizes. Read the rest of the article here.

 

The Zeer Pot

 

The Crosley IcyBall

 

 

 

Much has been made regarding the qualification of transport packaging for time and temperature-sensitive commercial healthcare products and as regulators gain expertise in this area they are turning their attention to those upstream in the process: investigational drugs. This month's Advanced Degrees column explores some of the reasons behind this new-found attention.

Greetings from beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia where the 4th IATA World Cargo Symposium is about to get underway.

It seems like I'm constantly running a day behind. So before getting consumed in pharmaceutical air cargo issues, I thought I would take a moment to link you to my latest Contract Pharma article. For all the controversy that can surround industry award competitions, the net gain here is that the patient ultimately benefits — and regardless of what you think about industry awards, that is a very good thing. The 2010 IQPC Cool Chain Excellence Awards.

Keep it real.