Discussion Question - Essay Example

Vaccines Vaccines Could more vaccine be made available if the government or patients simply paid more money for it? What are the pluses and minuses of producing extra at an increased cost? Vaccines should be generated with high level of quality in order to guarantee the safety of the users. By applying forecasting methods or approaches to predict how many vaccines will be required in future, it is important for manufacturers to have enough time to research and generate the vaccine. New product development will be vital for generation of quality vaccines.

The team responsible for producing the vaccine will have to inform the manufacturer so that production process can be designed in accordance with the ability of the machines or the factory. Operations and supply management is vital in developing the supply chain of the vaccine to ensure that vaccines are delivered on time. More vaccines may be insufficient or unavailable if the patients and government paid more money because the producer or manufacturer may not have the capacity to generate more vaccines.

Even if the manufacturer bought more machines to enhance production of the vaccine, it would consume a lot of time to ramp up and attain the expected vaccine capacity. The demerit or minus of producing more or extra vaccine at high cost is that it will automatically cut into profits because it needs new and modern machines to be bought. Further, it will require training and hiring of new workers, which may be costly. The process of manufacturing is devised in a manner that it balances costs, profits, and capacity.

The producers and the government require to hold the vaccine to a high standard as this will enhance quick delivery of the vaccines to the patients. This could be devised in a manner that the government could test the quality of the vaccine and deliver it to the patients. The pluses of producing more vaccines at an increased cost is that it will enhance efficiency and quality of the vaccine produced because more money would have been used to conduct enough research about the vaccine. 2. How should the government and producers balance safety – i.e. carefully assessing the vaccine so that few unintended consequences occur – versus speed of getting the vaccine to patients?

The government and producers can assess the risk of harm associated with the production of the vaccine. Therefore, they will determine if the intended vaccine confer immunity to certain virus or not. This will enable the government and the producers to provide advance warning that failure or harm of the vaccine may occur since vaccination is usually experimental each time it is administered on people. Vaccination may be risky or beneficial, therefore, in order to ensure the safety of the patients, the government should ensure that there manufacturers produce enough vaccines that can be delivered to be people in case the vaccine fails to confer immunity.

The government ensures that manufacturers provide detailed information about the risks and benefits of the vaccine so that patients could be aware of probable consequences of using vaccines. ReferencesPublic Health Report. (1992). The public health service action plan to improve access to Immunization services. Public health reports, 107(3), 243-297. Rogers, D. (2004). Supply chain management: Retrospective and prospective. Journal of marketing theory and practice, 12(4), 60-102.

Vokurka, R. (1998). Balancing marketing and supply chain activities. Journal of marketing theory and practice, 6(4), 41-73.