Trying to speed vaccine delivery process: Merck

Hyderabad: Sanat Chattopadhyay, Executive Vice President and president, Merck Manufacturing Division, on Tuesday said Merck would always strive to improve access to life-saving therapeutics and vaccines across the world

Merck is digitizing the supply chain from end-to-end, centralised management system to balance the supply and demand, entire logistics and distribution to be digital and cloud based with a single data link which helps to track and divert shipments in real-time, he said.

He added: "we are better prepared for the challenges of the future by learning the lessons. The lessons were to accelerate our digital journey for supply chain visibility, accelerating our risk management transformation and expand the scope to include our tier five suppliers, transform our workforce and capabilities, be more agile than ever, and public private partnerships."

India is playing a bigger role in the global pharmaceutical landscape and has been known to have immense capabilities as a low-cost drug manufacturer and supplier. With Bharat Biotech, speedy development of the Covid vaccine, the perception about India's pharma sector is now changing and world is now realising that India can do much more than just being a low-cost generics player. Therefore, India should keep pivoting to innovate and develop vaccines along with the low-cost manufacturing capabilities, he added. India should also facilitate more foreign investments and more investment is needed to promote research in academic institutions. India can join Merck and the rest of the industry globally, to help distribute and manage vaccines, thereby playing a much larger role in the global pharma industry, he added.