The world is fighting a ferocious enemy — Covid-19, which has claimed the lives of millions and affected many more people in every nation on earth.
As the World Health Organisation (WHO) and partners work together on the response — tracking the pandemic, advising on critical interventions, distributing vital medical supplies to those in need — they are racing to find a vaccine.
Obviously, vaccines save millions of lives each year. Immunisation currently prevents two to three million deaths every year from diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, influenza and measles.
Currently, there are more than 250 potential Covid-19 vaccines in various stages of development around the world, with progress being made at an unprecedented speed.
Vaccines normally require years of testing and additional time to produce at scale, but scientists are hoping to develop a coronavirus vaccine within 12-18 months.
Even if medical researchers and the pharmaceutical industry succeed in developing an effective vaccine, reaching it out to millions of people around the world is a gigantic task.
The last six months or so has proven without a doubt the critical importance of a well-functioning healthcare supply chain. It has also revealed many of the shortcomings and weak links in that chain.
While the procurement, transport and distribution of such items as personal protective equipment (PPE) posed one of the greatest logistics challenges of our lifetime, this will pale in comparison to an even greater task ahead of us: vaccine logistics.
That’s why the global body of airlines — IATA recently urged governments to begin careful planning with industry stakeholders to ensure full preparedness when vaccines for Covid-19 are approved and available for distribution. The association also warned of potentially severe capacity constraints in transporting vaccines by air.
The potential size of the delivery is enormous, IATA points out. Just providing a single dose to 7.8bn people would fill 8,000 747 (jumbo) cargo aircraft!
Therefore, it is evident that we must act quickly.
Geography will be a defining factor in how quickly and efficiently vaccines can be distributed, and here temperature requirements are likely to be the main challenge, points out World Economic Forum (WEF). If vaccines need to be distributed under the more stringent scenario, especially regions with a particularly warm climate and those with limited cold-chain logistics infrastructure will pose a huge challenge — this is the case in large parts of Africa, South America and Asia, WEF says.
The world has learned a lot of lessons over the past few months with regard to this health crisis. One of them is that sufficient planning and solid partnerships make a huge difference when it comes to meeting the surge in demand for medical supplies and ensuring their effective distribution.
Delivering billions of doses of vaccine to the entire world efficiently will involve hugely complex logistical and programmatic obstacles all the way along the supply chain.
A network with both public-private and government-to-government partnerships will be essential going forward.
Therefore, governments, vaccine manufacturers and logistical partners should work together and ensure an efficient global roll-out of a safe and affordable Covid-19 vaccine.
All of us are eager to see this pandemic end as quickly as possible!
