Vanda Felbab-Brown’s important article on supply chain challenges brings to light the unfortunate reality of many developing countries looking to disseminate medicine en masse (“Beware the criminal threat to the fight against Covid”, Opinion, December 17).
The reality is that many supply chains today are fragile, making them vulnerable to exploitation by hackers looking to disrupt the effective rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine. With the largest logistical undertaking of the century ahead of us, now more than ever is a critical time to re-examine supply networks the world over.
What Ms Felbab-Brown’s view overlooks, however, is the fact that — for the first time — we have the technology to do this correctly. A distributed, digital ledger could provide the transparency and guarantee of provenance that medical supplies absolutely require.
While the political and social issues that influence supply rollout are a separate challenge, we can at least ensure that we are using advances in new technologies for good, to bring trust to areas which we have control over. Anything less would constitute a global injustice.
Alisa Di Caprio
Head of Trade and Supply Chain, R3
New York, NY, US
