Scientists launch study exploring how best to distribute Covid-19 vaccine in Africa

Scientists are to launch a study exploring how cold-chain technology can be best used to distribute a Covid-19 vaccine throughout Africa.

Researchers from the University of Birmingham and Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, will work with the United Nations Environment Program – United for Efficiency team on a fast-track study in Rwanda which will explore how cold-chain is currently used to distribute vaccines in the country.

The study aims to define the gaps in infrastructure and develop strategies for sustainable Covid-19 vaccine delivery. The researchers hope that findings from the study will help governments, vaccine development agencies, as well as the pharmaceutical industry prepare a plan for the future.

In particular, it’s hoped that the fast-track programme will deliver a methodology that other developing countries in Africa and the wider Global South can use to assess their readiness to distribute temperature-sensitive vaccines.

More so, the fast-track programme will be used as a pilot to develop short-to-medium-term delivery of a Covid-19 vaccine in a safe, efficient and sustainable manner; create long term contingency health logistics frameworks that can respond to different levels of challenge; embed a vaccine delivery system that meets day-to-day demand, and reduce vaccines losses.

Deploying a mass, rapid Covid-19 vaccine throughout sub-Saharan Africa countries with rural populations will likely be a major challenge. The researchers state how existing cold-chain infrastructure will need to be significantly improved if a vaccine is to reach the people who need it.

The programme will run alongside the work of experts from Birmingham and Heriot-Watt in India, where they are joining forces with non-profit, commercial and academic partners to begin investigating the scale of challenge involved in distributing a potentially temperature-sensitive Covid-19 vaccine. The programme will utilise the Rwanda Cooling Initiative that is accelerating the country’s transition toward more efficient and climate-friendly cooling solutions.

Toby Peters, professor of Cold Economy at the University of Birmingham, commented: “Universal vaccine access is already a major challenge in the Global South, but sub-Saharan Africa faces a daunting challenge. Cold-chain will be critical in rapidly transporting and delivering Covid-19 vaccines to all communities, particularly in rural areas where electricity supply and cooling infrastructure is often non-existent or unreliable.

“We likely have a 12-18 month window to engineer efficient, equitable, robust delivery mechanisms to support a pace and breadth of vaccination never before considered. Taking Rwanda as a pilot, the majority of its population lives in rural areas and has one of the lowest Gross National Incomes. We’ll create a rapid assessment method to enable such countries to understand available cooling infrastructure and create options for Covid-19 vaccine distribution and beyond.”

Dr Bing Xu, associate professor in Finance at Heriot Watt, University, added: “This piece of work will prove hugely helpful in designing the right financing options. There is an urgent need to identify Rwanda’s financing gaps to ensure Covid-19 vaccines to be adequately prepared to store, transport, and deliver to their population. We also need to explore suitable financing channels to fund the mass vaccination without impacting the country’s current immunisation programme.”