Lumidigm, Fulcrum Biometrics participate in African vaccination program

Lumidigm and Fulcrum Biometrics have announced their participation in an African program through VaxTrac, which aims to reduce vaccine waste and ensure that vaccinations are delivered efficiently.

According to the two companies, millions of young children are not being vaccinated and an estimated 2.5 million will die before the age of five. By using fingerprint biometrics, the VaxTrac program intends to improve the record-keeping process to eliminate re-immunizations and to efficiently dole out vaccinations throughout Africa. Vaccination wastage rates have reached more than 50 percent in some of the most challenging geographies.

“With our VaxTrac system leveraging Lumidigm fingerprint sensors, we have been able to improve immunization tracking which allows us to reduce waste so that we can vaccinate more people and save lives,” Mark Thomas, executive director of VaxTrac said. “We started evaluating Lumidigm sensors in 2012. Since the skin of children, especially young children, can be very malleable, we knew from experience that conventional biometric technologies that need a finger pressed against the device do not work. The ability that Lumidigm offers to pull fingerprint images from deeper layers produces images less susceptible to distortion and allows us to track vaccinations accurately.”

“Being able to quickly read every patient’s fingerprints, no matter how problematic, in all types of conditions, from extremely dry to wet, is vital to this program,” Bill Spence, Lumidigm vice president of sales-North America, Europe and Australia said. “Biometric authentication has reduced the waste of vaccine dramatically, helping so many more people get vaccinated.”

Lumidigm plays a role in many African projects unvolving biometrics. Recently the company announced that it will provide fingerprint sensors for Senegalese biometric visa enrollment stations.

Article Topics

Africa  |  fingerprint  |  Fulcrum Biometrics  |  Lumidigm