Vaccine distribution supply chains in developing countries: A literature review

K De Boeck, C Decouttere and Nico Vandaele

No 629348, Working Papers of Department of Decision Sciences and Information Management, Leuven from KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Decision Sciences and Information Management, Leuven

Abstract: Access to immunization varies greatly across the world. In order to increase vaccine coverage, the required vaccines need to be able to reach the targeted population. However, in developing countries, this often turns out to be a challenging task. This article provides a literature review on vaccine distribution supply chains in developing countries and consists of two main parts. The first part elaborates on the characteristics and challenges inherent to such distribution supply chains. In order to obtain a complete overview, both quantitative and qualitative papers are included. In the second part, relevant operations research and operations management literature is structured according to seven classification criteria: decision level, methodology, part of the VDSC modelled, uncertainties and characteristics covered, performance measures, real-life applicability, and countries and vaccines covered. Throughout these classifications, a comparison is made between issues reported in practice and those investigated in operations research and operations management literature. Based on this analysis, we identify trends and conclude that several gaps exist, providing a promising avenue for future research.

Pages: 38
Date: 2018-11
Note: paper number KBI_1815
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in FEB Research Report KBI_1815

Downloads: (external link)
https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/521755 Published version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ete:kbiper:629348

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers of Department of Decision Sciences and Information Management, Leuven from KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Decision Sciences and Information Management, Leuven
Bibliographic data for series maintained by library EBIB ().