Immunization service delivery

Project Optimize

Rethinking the immunization logistics

“An ideal supply chain is one that ensures that the limits of science are not constrained by the limits of systems.” — Dr Orin Levine, Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

M.Dorgabekova
Continuing the vaccine cold chain, Bangladesh

Over the past decade, the world has invested enormous resources and energy into the development of new and lifesaving vaccines. Current vaccination programmes save more than three million lives per year, and new vaccines that focus on diseases affecting people in the world’s poorest countries can protect millions more.

But it’s not just about developing safe and effective vaccines. It’s about getting vaccines to the right place, at the right time, in the right condition. And that means delivery systems that are as advanced and innovative as the vaccines they support.

Optimize: Immunization Systems and Technologies for Tomorrow, a collaboration between the World Health Organization (WHO) and PATH, has been given a unique mandate to think far into the future: to put technological and scientific advances to work, helping define the ideal characteristics and specifications for health products, and to create a vaccine supply chain that is flexible and robust enough to handle an increasingly large and costly portfolio of vaccines and, ultimately, work efficiently with the delivery of other health commodities.

Optimize highlights

  • 28 March 2012

    New funding opportunity: innovation to strengthen immunization systems

    A new call for proposals from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation seeks bold new strategies to increase the effectiveness and reliability of immunization systems. The Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Explorations grant program offers US$100 000 grants to help prove the potential of innovative approaches to optimize immunization systems.

  • 12 January 2012

  • 6 September 2011

    Rewarding pioneering ideas: grants for innovative approaches to optimize immunization systems

    The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is now accepting proposals for its Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative which fosters innovation in global health research. This year, the initiative offers scientists, inventors, non-governmental organizations, ministries of health and entrepreneurs from around the world the opportunity to acquire US$100 000 grants to pursue unconventional ideas that could transform immunization supply systems in the world's poorest countries.