Adding Rota created new transport (e.g., between the Natitingou Department and the Parakou Department and the Kandi Region Store

and the Parakou Department) and storage bottlenecks (several Department and Commune Stores now had insufficient capacity) and lowered vaccine availability, increased transport operating costs (without affecting other operating costs) and decreased doses delivered, increasing the logistics cost per dose administered from $0.23 to $0.26. As Table 2 shows, a total capital expenditure of $285,088 (two cold rooms ($58,502) and one building selleckchem ($26,686) at the National Depot, three cold rooms ($87,753) and two buildings to house the cold rooms ($37,146) at the Department level, 17 refrigerators ($51,000) at the Commune level, and eight refrigerators ($24,000) at the Health Posts level) would be needed to alleviate current bottlenecks to drop the logistics cost per dose administered to $0.20. At the lowest level, replacing the point-to-point motorcycle

routes with 4 × 4 truck transport loops (Table 1) results in fewer total trips (a truck, which can carry more vaccines and serve more Health Outposts than a motorcycle, would only have to travel once monthly versus two to three times a month) but a higher recurring MAPK inhibitor transportation cost ($0.36 versus $0.10 per kilometer) since longer distance truck transport loops incur Isotretinoin more per diems. Adding more Health Posts per truck loop further decreases the total distance traveled but the increased distance per loop may incur more per diems. Simply adding shipping loops to the current structure did not yield cost savings (Table 3). With the existing vaccine regimen, consolidating the Commune level into 34 Health Zones (by redistributing existing Commune level equipment rather than purchasing new equipment) slightly increased

overall vaccine availability, increased transport costs (from increasing route distances), and lowered labor costs (from fewer locations requiring fewer total personnel). Rota introduction dropped vaccine availability from 94% to 64%, and increased logistics cost per dose from $0.23 to $0.29 (a greater increase than for the current baseline structure, $0.23 to $0.26). Absorbing the former Communes’ demand further constrained the transport routes to the Health Zones. Alleviating the bottlenecks for the Health Zone structure required less new equipment (two cold rooms and one building at the National Depot, three cold rooms and two buildings at the Department level, and eight refrigerators at the Health Posts) and therefore lower capital expenditures than doing so for the current Benin structure, since having fewer locations allowed reassignment of many cold storage devices.