Dan Brigden

As the World is about to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Expanded Programme on Immunization, we must  remember and pay tribute to one of its most important actors, our mentor and friend, John Seton Lloyd, who just passed away.

John  was the architect of the vaccine cold chain.

• In 1976, he started working at the World Health Organization and designed with Ghana Health authorities, the first developing country vaccine cold chain. A model then reproduced by all countries in the World.

• John convinced several companies to design and manufacturer equipment needed by the EPI: Cold boxes, vaccines carriers, multi-energy refrigerators, ice lined refrigerators solar powered refrigerators, auto disable syringes. All this equipment designed with his inputs was then produced and sold in massive quantities by firms that have probably made fortunes. John never thought of his personal interest. All the equipment that is now used in immunization programmes is formally prequalified by World Health Organization through a procedure  that John also conceived.

• John Lloyd was a critical contributor  to the design and now widespread use of the Vaccine Vial Monitors a heat sensitive label that is affixed on all vaccines procured by UNICEF and and warns the health worker wether a vaccine vial has been exposed to an amount of heat likely to have degraded it.

• John Lloyd launched Technet which then became Technet-21.

• John Lloyd played a critical role in the Kick Polio out of Africa initiative launched in the mid 1990's at the time of the Football African Cup of Nations. 

• John designed the Immunization Systems Strengthening performance based reward scheme of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance  as well as many of the first tools for countries to apply for support. He was also an instrumental part in the design of a tool called the DataQualityAudit which enabled GAVI to verify the reports  issued by countries.

Without John’s tireless focus on Cold chain and logistics, the backbone of immunization programmes, vaccines would never have be delivered in the right quantities, at the right time, in the right conditions to safely immunize hundreds of millions of children that have been protected from killer diseases since John Lloyd started to work in this field in 1976.

John Lloyd is one of these unsung Heroes of Public Health who was never in the news. He has remained discrete, silent and humble and  never stopped being innovative, creative and committed.

Global Public Health and Immunization have lost a mentor and a friend.

I personnally owe to John to have brought me into WHO and the extraordinary world of EPI and Logistics. I simply owe him my whole carreer.

My thoughts are with Anne, his spouse and Cressie and Zoe his daughters, his grand children and their families.

Thank you John and Goodbye 👋