It reviews new technologies in various stages of development that have the potential to eliminate or reduce restrictions to vaccine flow. This chapter briefly describes key restrictions to vaccine flow logistics in terms of complexity, cost, human resources requirements, distributability, and sources of errors in the immunization process. Managing vaccine flow around those obstacles is the day-to-day work of immunization programs, which often requires heroic effort.
Reviewing immunization as a package delivery process and recognizing critical hurdles, bottlenecks, and barriers to vaccine flow is a first step toward making immunization programs more efficient and effective. Some advances will come in the form of better vaccine antigens however, significant potential also lies in improving the way vaccines are packaged and delivered.
Continual sharpening of this public health tool is needed to achieve the full potential of immunization for improving health. Immunization is one of the most powerful tools for health, but many current vaccines are not affordable, accessible, and acceptable to everyone who needs them. This simple concept of delivering antigen packages from point to point can help elucidate the complex logistical challenges inherent in the preservation, packaging, storage, transportation, and administration of vaccines. In this sense, immunization programs are package delivery systems: they manage the flow of antigens, formulated in vaccines and packaged in different presentations, between the point of origin at the vaccine manufacturer and the point of consumption, inside antigen-presenting cells (APCs) of the vaccinee. Immunization can be described as the process of delivering carefully packaged antigen to the appropriate destination in a vaccine recipient to produce a desired immune response.
New Technologies Needed to Reduce Immunization Logistics Hurdles