Direct Relief, working with the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, BIRMEX, and the Nicaragua Ministry of Health (MINSA), transported this week to Nicaragua 650,000 polio vaccine doses to bolster the nation’s child vaccination efforts.

The supplies were delivered via a Direct Relief-chartered AeroMexico flight from Mexico City to Managua on Wednesday.

Like most vaccines, the polio vaccine is a cold-chain medication; it must be delivered in special containers and remain refrigerated between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius throughout transit and final delivery.

Earlier this month, Direct Relief, a registered civil association in Mexico with tax-deductible status, worked with the Government of Mexico to transport 95,000 doses of bivalent oral polio vaccine to Ecuador.

Pharmaceutical distributors—and Direct Relief—are among the only organizations with cold-chain vaccine shipment capability.

Direct Relief has extensive experience working with the world’s largest medical manufacturers to distribute cold-chain prescription medications connected with humanitarian and emergency-response efforts.

In 2020, Direct Relief completed nearly two thousand cold-chain deliveries of such products, managing end-to-end distribution to health facilities across the United States, Mexico, and more than 50 other countries.

The deliveries contained 21.6 million doses of temperature-sensitive medications, including insulin, cancer drugs, hemophilia treatments, vaccines, and biologic therapies for patients with rare genetic diseases.