Tuesday 30 September 2014

Ways to Optimize Vaccine Allocation During Epidemic



The vaccine optimization, in first place is essential to curb the malady of endemic diseases. The next issue is to ensure the allocation of optimized vaccines before letting pandemic outbreaks to catch up. Taking the case of HINI virus irruption, the onslaught initiated in April 2011, but the vaccines were not available late until the secondary outbreak inflicted humanity by October.


The strategy to cure the speedy transmission

To strategically place the vaccine formulation development in the areas as per geographical demography is the challenge. The vaccination research labs across continents primarily focus upon even and rapid dispersion. As a result, development of deterministic endemic model within disparate age groups is devised. The model is bifurcated in two divisions, adult and children and is subdivided further on the basis of risk levels— high and low.

Methods and Findings

The setting in the model is a replication of a developed country wherein children account for 25% of the total population. For each of these populations, the mortality rate or the hospitalization is minimized. The next step is to formulate an optimal vaccination strategy that gives the best vaccine allocation, given a starting vaccination time and vaccine coverage level. 

The location of the population structure is identified, as it is an important factor in influencing the optimal vaccine distribution. Moreover, the optimal policy is subjected to radical changes.  For example, with 30% vaccine coverage, it is judicious to safeguard the high-transmission groups before this point, but it is ideal to protect the most vulnerable and prone groups afterwards urgently.

Elaborating the scenario for a developed economy, as the vaccine supply escalates it becomes imperative to allocate the resources in the high-transmission group, which counts for children as the target victims. Only after protecting the highly vulnerable groups the chain of transmission can be curtailed from advancing its ensnaring claws further.

Summing up

Choosing the optimal scheme before or early in the epidemic makes a significant difference in minimizing the number of endemic afflictions, and consequently the helps in cutting down over the death toll or mortality rates.

No comments:

Post a Comment