Guidelines on stock records for immunization programme - Path

For easy identification, labels should also be attached to doors and/or shelves of
refrigerators and/or cold/freezer rooms indicating the contents, expiry dates and
batch numbers. Quantities may also be added but is not necessary.
Figure 4: Store manager showing labels on the shelves of
the primary vaccine cold store in Kabul, Afghanistan
Photo: Ü. Kartoglu/WHO
3.2 Inventory control card
Inventory control cards keep information about all batches of a product. One inventory
control card should be kept for each product. For example, for a DTP vaccine of
three different batches, there should be three batch cards and one inventory control
card. In the inventory control card, total quantity in hand of DTP vaccines, as well
as the total losses and adjustments regardless of the batch numbers and locations of
the products will be seen. Inventory control card is a summary of the batch cards for
a product (Figure 5).
In some countries, government rules require the use of store ledgers. A store ledger
is a stock keeping record that contains same information as the inventory control
card. Ledger format is less flexible tool for store manager, because it is easy to run
out of space for an individual product. It is also hard to add new products.
Individual inventory cards can be kept in abc order, but pages cannot be alphabetized
in a bound book.
WHO/IVB/06.12
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