ThermoSafe Transporters with zipper...Crossmatched blood to outlying hospitals

[KBBB]

We have ThermoSafe Transporters for sending blood to outlying hospitals. If you have these, do you "lock" them in any way? We don't want to break the zippers, which I'm pretty sure will happen if a plastic lock is strung through the holes in the zipper pulls. I can't find that there is any requirement to do this. We will use couriers and there is a concern by one person that the containers should have some sort of tamper proof system so the couriers don't "mess with the blood". Any suggestions?

[John C. Staley]

Why on earth would the couriers "mess with the blood"??? Do they have a history of such things?

A little paranoia is ok but I would think this is over the top. I know of no requirements for securing blood shipping containers.

:disbelief

[clmergen]

I agree. The couriers are either hospital employees or contracted, either way they are way too busy to mess with the blood. And on top of that, how could they mess with it? If it was spiked, that should be obvious.

Heck, even boxes sent via Fedex, UPS, etc are only taped.