title: Only adding stationary storage to vaccine supply chains may create and worsen transport bottlenecks.
abstract: Although vaccine supply chains in many countries require additional stationary storage and transport capacity to meet current and future needs, international donors tend to donate stationary storage devices far more often than transport equipment. To investigate the impact of only adding stationary storage equipment on the capacity requirements of transport devices and vehicles, we used HERMES (Highly Extensible Resource for Modeling Supply Chains) to construct a discrete event simulation model of the Niger vaccine supply chain. We measured the transport capacity requirement for each mode of transport used in the Niger vaccine cold chain, both before and after adding cold rooms and refrigerators to relieve all stationary storage constraints in the system. With the addition of necessary stationary storage, the average transport capacity requirement increased from 88% to 144% for cold trucks, from 101% to 197% for pickup trucks, and from 366% to 420% for vaccine carriers. Therefore, adding stationary storage alone may worsen or create new transport bottlenecks as more vaccines flow through the system, preventing many vaccines from reaching their target populations. Dynamic modeling can reveal such relationships between stationary storage capacity and transport constraints.
authors.affiliation: Public Health Computational and Operational Research Group, School of Medicine and Graduate School of Public Health, Department of Biostatistics, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA.
authors.forename: Leila A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Haidari
authors.forename: Diana L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Connor
authors.forename: Angela R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Wateska
authors.forename: Shawn T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: Leslie E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Mueller
authors.forename: Bryan A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Norman
authors.forename: Michelle M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Schmitz
authors.forename: Proma
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Paul
authors.forename: Jayant
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rajgopal
authors.forename: Joel S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Welling
authors.forename: Jim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Leonard
authors.forename: Erin G
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Claypool
authors.forename: Yu-Ting
authors.initials: YT
authors.lastname: Weng
authors.forename: Sheng-I
authors.initials: SI
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Bruce Y
authors.initials: BY
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D004356:Drug Storage / Q000379:methods*; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009548:Niger; D014186:Transportation; D014612:Vaccines / Q000600:supply & distribution*
chemical_list: D014612:Vaccines
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