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This is again due to a lack of proper education
and the scarcity of remote monitoring tools and
methods (e.g., as could be provided using mobile
phone applications).
A great innovation for treatment and tracking
of patients, beds, staff, and mobile equipment is
the GE AgileTrac system, which can be used lo-
cally to track hospital resources and ensure that
the right resources are available in a hospital at
the right place and at the right time. Using this
technology, GE has been able to optimize care
delivery in multiple facilities leading to cost sav-
ings of up to 30% (http://agiletrac.gehealthcare.
com, 2010). A similar technology is required for
tracking outpatients in developing countries and
also to allow more local small-scale hospitals to
tie up with bigger better equipped hospitals to al-
low for medical consultation and palliative care.
Using mobile phone technology to achieve this
appears to be a very feasible solution.
•
Most vaccines are very expensive for ru-
ral developing populations (e.g., HPV
vaccine).
•
It is often difficult to reach the target popu-
lation and effectively communicate the ef-
fectiveness of the vaccines with them.
•
Inadequate health care infrastructure, poor
maintenance of cold chain, and injection
safety concerns.
•
Limited resources and family constraints
on vaccinating against multiple diseases
cause them to select only a few vaccines,
or to completely ignore all of them.
•
Failure in secondary prevention methods,
e.g., HPV screening or visual inspection in
the country.
•
There are various religious and cultural
barriers, misconceptions, and taboos asso-
ciated with accepting vaccines in the de-
veloping world. Doctors, parents, adoles-
cents, and entire populations hold certain
views preventing them from vaccine ac-
ceptance, e.g., a vaccine against a sexually
transmitted disease for higher risk groups
may cause people to ostracize them or
question sexual behavior.
Challenges in Successful
Vaccinations
Vaccinations are critical in preventing infectious
diseases and associated mortality in developing
countries. There have been several successes,
e.g., vaccines against smallpox have eradicated
the disease, polio is on the verge of eradication,
and there is a rapid reduction in many childhood
infections. Developing countries have lagged
behind in adopting vaccines that were devel-
oped many years back in the developed world.
Vaccines against prevalent diseases like chicken
pox, hepatitis A, and pneumococcal infections are
only now becoming available in the developing
world. Even though these vaccines are available
now, there are many hindrances in the administra-
tion of successful vaccination programs due to a
variety of reasons (Prianka Mukhopadhyay and
Bhaskar Paul, 2009):
•
Lack of political will by local leaders to ac-
cept foreign medical practices.
The expensive pricing of vaccines is one of
the biggest challenges against successful admin-
istration of the vaccines. One of the proposed
ways to overcome this is to allow compensation
for research and development performed locally
through clinical trials of the vaccine and by mak-
ing the market more competitive for the vaccine
by making it available to different pharmaceutical
companies. Building local and regional clinical
trials and vaccine production capability without
the need for importing the vaccine are promising
options.
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