Factors to vaccine cold chain management for sustainable and resilient healthcare delivery

Abstract

The efficient distribution and timely vaccine delivery to the masses during any pandemic situation require reliable and efficient vaccine cold chain management (VCCM). Therefore, the present study is an effort to explore the factors of VCCM to develop a sustainable and resilient healthcare delivery system in any health outbreak. The factors of VCCM are scrutinized using Fuzzy-Delphi method and then prioritized adopting Fuzzy-Analytical Hierarchy Process (F-AHP) approach while considering the stakeholders' inputs. Finally, factors are categorized into clusters by implementing a machine learning tool ‘k-means clustering’ algorithm. The results of the study are further validated by conducting extended robustness tests. The findings of the study highlight the factors, namely, cold chain infrastructure, vaccine storage guidelines and availability of skilled professionals as the most important for VCCM. The ′k-means clustering’ algorithm analysis classifies all the 16 factors into three clusters: continuous process improvement (including eight factors), stakeholders' coordination (five factors) and maximum resource utility (three factors). The study can be significantly useful to VCCM decision-makers to implement the prioritized factors by ensuring the advanced cold chain infrastructure and issuing special storage and distribution guidelines to fight against health outbreaks like COVID-19. This is one of the few papers to discuss the factors of VCCM for developing a sustainable and resilient healthcare delivery system in the context of pandemics and stakeholders can address the factors in different clusters at a time.