Developed in collaboration with national and international partners and coordinated by project Optimize, these action plans describe specific activities and strategies designed to help achieve the 2020 vision for immunization supply and logistics systems. The vision and action plans are divided into five priority areas: vaccine products and packaging, immunization supply system efficiency, environmental impact of immunization supply systems, immunization information systems, and human resources for immunization logistics.

Publication date: September 2012

Region: Global

This document describes the partnership that created the vaccine vial monitor, providing a useful example to policymakers, funders, nongovernmental and multilateral organizations, and product developers of how the public and private sectors can better address today’s greatest global health needs through dynamic, long-term partnerships.

Publication date: September 2012

Region: North America and Europe

This brochure describes how advances in vaccine supply chain systems can accelerate the delivery of lifesaving immunizations to people who need them. The document offers recommendations for global policymakers to support countries in building more effective supply chain systems.

Publication date: September 2012

Region: Global

This project Optimize evidence brief provides supply chain managers in low- and middle-income countries with an overview of the potential benefits of outsourcing components of their vaccine logistics systems to the private sector. It also provides practical advice on determining whether outsourcing is a viable option.

Publication date: September 2012

Region: Global

Part of series: Project Optimize evidence brief series

This document describes how project Optimize is collaborating with the Albanian Institute of Public Health to transform the way immunization data and vaccine stock are managed. The two-year collaboration aims to evaluate the benefits of a supply chain that uses an online immunization registry, remotely connected temperature monitoring devices, and a distribution system organized for optimum efficiency.

Publication date: August 2012

Region: Global

This document describes how project Optimize is collaborating with the Senegalese Ministry of Health to demonstrate innovations in the supply chain that can help to increase efficiency and improve performance, preparing the country for the introduction of new vaccines in the future.

Publication date: August 2012

Region: Global

Today, most health workers at the service‐delivery level in developing countries use paper‐based systems to track the individuals who have been vaccinated and the vaccines and other resources used during the process. Project Optimize, a World Health Organization and PATH collaboration, is working with the Albanian Institute of Public Health to develop and implement an immunization information system that will provide the type of high-quality, granular data that policymakers need.

Publication date: July 2012

Region: Global

Keeping heat-sensitive vaccines and other drugs at the right temperature is crucial yet often difficult in areas with limited or no electrical power. In response to this challenge, a group of public- and private-sector partners is working with project Optimize to evaluate a range of transportation and storage containers for heat-sensitive drugs and vaccines that operate in environments with or without access to reliable power.

Publication date: July 2012

Region: Global

Many health facilities in remote areas operate without grid electricity, have unreliable electricity, or find that using electricity is too costly. In these settings, solar energy is a promising solution for powering the storage and transportation of vaccines and heat‐sensitive drugs at controlled temperatures. Project Optimize, a collaboration between the World Health Organization and PATH, has been working with public and private partners on several solar technologies tailored to the following local electrical power conditions: unavailable or unreliable power, intermittent power, and reliable power.

Publication date: July 2012

Region: Global

Project Optimize is collaborating with the Senegalese Ministry of Health to implement and validate a "moving warehouse" that will streamline the vaccine supply chain from the regional to the peripheral level. A moving warehouse is a truck composed of delivery teams that visit each health facility, check stock levels, and replenish stock as needed.

Publication date: July 2012

Region: Global

This fact sheet outlines the different approaches that project Optimize, a World Health Organization and PATH collaboration, is testing to demonstrate that a consumption‐based system that uses service-delivery-level data can have a beneficial impact on inventory management, stock levels, and vaccine wastage.

Publication date: July 2012

Region: Global

Project Optimize, a collaboration between the World Health Organization and PATH, aims to provide national immunization programs with recommendations to build integrated health supply systems, including strategic linkages with the parastatal and private sector. Ultimately, integration will allow public health programs to reduce uncertainties and risks, achieve economies of scale, shorten delivery lead times, improve procurement, provide better incentives for health workers, and improve quality of service to clients.

Publication date: July 2012

Region: Global

Global investments to strengthen regulatory capacity in developing countries help ensure desperately needed medical products are delivered, thereby improving health and equipping countries with the expertise and infrastructure to make important health decisions for years to come.

Publication date: July 2012

Region: Global

Project Optimize, a World Health Organization and PATH collaboration, is working to enable immunization programs to take advantage of the true stability of vaccines by labeling them for use at ambient temperatures in a controlled temperature chain for limited periods of time as appropriate to the stability of the antigen.

Publication date: July 2012

Region: Global

In collaboration with the Albanian Ministry of Health, project Optimize has installed a short message service–based system that monitors and logs temperature conditions in peripheral cold chain equipment. The team aims to assess the benefits of remote alarm systems over nonconnected temperature loggers.

Publication date: July 2012

Region: Global

This document describes how project Optimize and the Tunisian Ministry of Public Health are collaborating to explore new logistics and supply chain solutions that can optimize the vaccine supply chain.

Publication date: July 2012

Region: Africa

This document describes how project Optimize is collaborating with Vietnam’s National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology to demonstrate innovations in the supply chain that can help to meet the demands of an increasingly large and costly portfolio of vaccines.

Publication date: July 2012

Region: Asia

This fact sheet describes the positive impact that adjuvants can have on vaccine efficacy and, potentially, immunization program costs. It also describes PATH’s work to expand global access to proprietary and non-proprietary adjuvants as well as relevant formulations technologies to facilitate their successful exploration and use by product development partnerships and developing-country vaccine manufacturers.

Publication date: June 2012

Region: Global

The positive impact of adjuvants on vaccination can be functional and practical. A handful of adjuvants are currently licensed for human vaccination, and a number of new adjuvants have reached advanced development stages. However, access to these and other adjuvants is limited. Presented at the 2012 Conference on Modern Vaccines Adjuvants and Delivery Systems, this poster outlines PATH’s work to expand access to proprietary and non-proprietary adjuvants as well as relevant formulations technologies to facilitate their successful exploration and use by product development partnerships and developing-country vaccine manufacturers.

Author: Blum J, Chen D, Cummings R

Publication date: June 2012

Region: Global

This fact sheet describes how project Optimize and our partners, Agence de Médecine Préventive, United Nations Children’s Fund, and the Vaccine Modeling Initiative at University of Pittsburgh, are working with countries to model the impact of changes to vaccine logistics and supply systems on vaccine availability, using a powerful new modeling tool called HERMES.

Publication date: May 2012

Region: Global