Although the flu causes tens of thousands of deaths each year in the United States, vaccine to fight the illness is often in short supply when the flu season is at its peak.
Now MIT-affiliated researchers have come up with some ways to get the vaccine where it's needed in a timely fashion. Implementing these recommendations could make future influenza outbreaks less deadly.
The vaccine supply chain study is led by Prashant Yadav, professor of supply chain management at the Zaragoza Logistics Center (ZLC), which is a partner in the MIT-Zaragoza International Logistics Program, a research and education collaboration among the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, the University of Zaragoza (Spain), the government of Aragón, Spain, and industry partners.
A study carried out by Yadav and David Williams, a recent graduate of logistics and supply chain management at Zaragoza, has identified a number of ways to make the vaccine supply chain more efficient.
At the heart of the vaccine shortage problem are imbalances between supply and demand, they said. On the supply side, manufacturers have opted out of the unpredictable vaccine market, causing a chronic shortage of production capacity. Only two manufacturers now produce the vaccine.
Demand-side factors are just as erratic, Yadav said. The type of vaccine required changes from year to year depending on the strain of virus that hits populations. And there are market mechanisms that compound the uncertainty. Some buyers, such as hospitals, over-order to cover themselves in case of future shortages, and then cancel the surplus.
Sellers use these supply/demand imbalances to push up prices, Yadav said. "There is a great deal of gaming and price gouging."
These market ambiguities often lead to midseason shortages of vaccine and end-of-season excesses, said Yadav. For example, when the U.S. flu outbreak was in full swing in 2004, there was much heated debate over vaccine scarcities, "but at the end of the season there was an excess of about 5 million doses," he said.
The study makes several recommendations to address these problems: