With the outbreak of COVID-19 and the tremendous efforts by every country’s healthcare system, this year’s World Refrigeration Day must be dedicated to all those that contribute directly or indirectly towards the treatment and a cure.
The doctors, nurses and the researchers dedicated to the protection of the human race are the primary heroes of our times. Some less known heroes that have offered their continued services to maintenance of the health sector are without a doubt the people of refrigeration.

We casually use refrigeration every day of our lives without a second thought and without really understanding the consequences to our habits if refrigeration was suddenly gone. The application of refrigeration in the health sector offers so much to the preservation of our modern life and civilisation, with some examples being:

• Climate control of hospitals, healthcare units, operating rooms and generally health care buildings, for comfort and the reduction of in-hospital infections and mortality rates. Negative pressure chambers are but an example of current affairs for what air conditioning has to offer.
• Refrigeration and cooling of medical systems and equipment which without cooling they would never be able to work. One very well-known system is the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) which would not exist without superconductors at very low temperatures.
• Blood banks and organ storage. Organ transplant surgeries are dependent on maintaining the correct temperature of organs and blood.
• Research, production and supply of medicine and vaccines, which without refrigeration, their production and distribution would be impossible.
• Cooling and refrigeration in morgues, which as morbid as it sounds, prolonged maintenance of a body in the correct temperature may allow the timely identification of the cause of death days or even weeks after passing.
• Bottling of medical gases without which things like the oxygen supply to patients would not be possible.

I am pretty confident that these are but a few of all the refrigeration has to offer in the modern health and medicine sectors, allowing us to have easier, longer and healthier .
Without further ado, I would like to wish from the bottom of my heart, to all of the people of refrigeration, researchers, manufacturers, contractors and technicians, our sector’s unknown heroes in our everyday fight for survival, thank you for your efforts and may you have a happy World Refrigeration Day.

#WorldRefrigerationDay #WREFD2020 #Refrigeration 

Dimitris Tairis BEng, MSc
Mechanical Engineering / Environmental Engineering
Vice President and Managing Director of TAIRIS AEVE
Vice President of EPSI SA
President of PASEEPS
Vice President of SOPIMIPSIK (HUFGAS)
Special representative of SOPIMIPSIK to European association AREA