A large portion of global health's scope, and what I will focus on in this entry, pertains to the elimination of infectious diseases through effective vaccination of vulnerable, and in some cases, entire populations. Obviously, a large obstacle to vaccinating people is first, developing a vaccine, but it has recently come to global health and biomedical engineer officials' attention that there may be a bigger challenges.The bigger challenge may be covert, only showing its face after the development of a vaccine, whereas another challenge may be more overt and be easily identified. An example of an easily identifiable overt challenge faces the development of an HIV vaccination for Africans in the Sub-Saharan. The challenge to biomedical engineers and scientists would be to develop a vaccine in which the immunogens won't denature in warm weather or to develop a protective method for transporting the vaccine during a hot day. This is only one example ,however, there may be numerous other challenges regarding vaccination methods when applied in massive populations. For these reasons it is becoming increasingly more apparent that scientists developing not only vaccines, but also drugs and therapies, while working in concert with biomedical engineers and global health officials so that they may coordinate effective health technologies and strategies for addressing global health issues.
3 comments:
i like your post...i never thought about that before. i agree, coming up with a drug that withstands environmental challenges is important and needs to come from a collaborative perspective. i guess i have another challenge to add-how will those drugs be paid for and will they be marketed and priced so that developing countries can afford them? food for thought i guess :)
hey jordan, that's a really good point. when i was working in the rainforest, the clinic there didn't have a fridge, so the doctor had to store vaccines in a nearby community accessible only by boat, whenever the motorist was available to operate the boat. if a family is walking two hours to get to this clinic, you have a very small window of opportunity to get those kids vaccinated. such a simple thing as you said--eliminating the cold chain--could make all the difference in that world.
Just a thought but i read in an article that one of the biggest problems with vaccines is that in certain developed countries where a certain illness is no longer endemic, those countries still spend huge amounts on the vaccines. Thus low risk populations are getting vaccinated, while high risk populations are not... kinda silly don't you think?
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