Role of Vaccine Manufacturers in the Process of Immunization

Role of vaccine manufacturers in the process of immunization

Abstract
      The role that vaccine manufacturers play in the immunization process is carefully examined. A brief background of vaccines and immunization is provided followed by a short description of the vaccine manufacturing process.
      Keeping an eye on the whole process of vaccination, group discussions were aimed at understanding the role of vaccine manufacturers. On the basis of detailed analysis of the immunization process and its challenges; reasons are given as to why vaccine manufacturers are important, and why their role in the immunization process must be considered before changes are made to the existing system.

Introduction
      Vaccine manufacturers play a critical role in the knowledge of how to use vaccines to prevent diseases.   Vaccines are administered to prevent disease, and consist of a suspension of pathogens that are weakened, killed, or fragmented. By proper vaccination of a patient, resistance to a specific disease or strain of disease is acquired. [1]
      Vaccine development and manufacture is a complex, time-consuming process (for example, the flu vaccine takes up to 6 months to develop each year after determining which strain will most likely be virulent that year). [2] If a substance makes it past the research stage, which can take decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and remains viable as an option towards use in a vaccination, it may proceed to manufacture.   Manufacture of a vaccination involves first generating a pathogen, altering that pathogen by attenuating, extracting, or killing the virus, and then combining the altered pathogen with other components to produce the vaccine. [3]
      Conditions such as temperature, pH, solvents or other present chemicals in the process must all be carefully regulated during the production of the vaccine to ensure the quality of the product.   After manufacture, the vaccine must go through three phases of...