Optimal immunization strategies for groups at risk in vaccine supply chain management

Abstract

Annual influenza epidemics cause great losses in human and financial terms. Vaccination is the most effective way of protecting people from being infected. However, the impact of vaccination on the disease spread is dependent on the chosen immunization strategy and on functional, end-to-end vaccine supply chains and logistics systems. This paper aims to determine the optimal combination of the various immunization strategies that lead to decrease of the disease burden. A supply-chain based model is proposed to address this problem. Computational results show that targeted vaccination significantly outperforms other strategies and prevails over them in terms of cost and efficacy.