People that Deliver Newsflash
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In this issue:
- Highlights from the PtD Benin Board meeting in Cotonou, Benin
- New PtD Secretariat Staff member: Alexis Strader
- News from our partner organizations
- Upcoming events
- In our next issue
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Highlights from the PtD Board Meeting in Cotonou, Benin
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This past March, PtD board members convened their yearly in-person board meeting in Cotonou, Benin. Many thanks to the Beninese Logistics Association (AsLoB) who managed the logistics for the event and liaised with the Beninese Ministry of Health for the official proceedings. The Minister of Health in Benin and representatives from the Department Prefect, WHO, and USAID kicked off the two-day meeting with a welcome ceremony. You can watch
this brief local news
story to find out more.
Following the opening ceremony, the Executive Manager presented administrative highlights of PtD and an overview of activities planned for 2018. Highlights include: the Health & Humanitarian Logistics Conference in July, which PtD is co-organizing, the release of the updated Competency Compendium, and the much anticipated Theory of Change for HR in Supply Chain Management.
Much of the first day was spent in a facilitated a discussion on how PtD and board organizations can improve country coordination, strengthen advocacy at the country level, and affect policy change. Board members selected six countries to target for building and strengthening advocacy communities: Benin, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Sudan. Each country has a designated board member who will lead these country coordination activities over the next year.
Day two kicked off with a discussion of the support needs for the Secretariat and PtD’s transformative direction for the 2018-2020 period, which was summed up in the following four goals:
- PROMOTING stewardship and leadership at the national level to address the health supply chain workforce needs
- ADVOCATING for the development of a competent, supported supply chain workforce deployed across the public and private sectors within the health system
While maintaining the long-term strategic goals of:
- SUSTAINING a global community dedicated to mobilizing support and resources towards a professional health supply chain workforce
- DEVELOPING, CATALYZING AND DISSEMINATING evidence-based approaches for human resources for supply chain management that is informed by best practices and responsive to an evolving environment
The meeting closed with the approval of four new board members: SAPICS, the Minister of Health for Benin, IntraHealth International, and the International Federation Pharmaceutical Wholesalers (IFPW). To learn more about these four organizations, visit their website. You can find brief descriptions below.
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The Minister of Health, Benin, with the Department Prefect, and representatives from ASLoB, PtD, WHO and USAID.
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SAPICS is South Africa’s leading source of knowledge and expertise in supply chain management including production, inventory, materials management, purchasing, distribution and logistics. SAPICS is proud to be APICS' exclusive Premier Channel Partner in Africa as well as a valued partner of the Demand Driven Institute, Institute of Business Forecasting and Supply and Fapics.
The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers (IFPW)
and IFPW Foundation represent pharma distribution around the world. Members are supply chain experts in the movement of critical health care products. This is accomplished through talented and experienced people. Without competent people, nothing happens. The promotion of workforce excellence in health supply chain management is directly on point with their members’ capabilities.
IntraHealth International
works with countries around the world to make sure their health workers are trained, supported, and ready to do the job. Their mission is to improve the performance of health workers and strengthen the systems in which they work so that everyone, everywhere has the health care they need to thrive. IntraHealth incorporated as an independent nonprofit organization in 2003. In 2017, IntraHealth and DAI joined forces to amplify their development impact. IntraHealth is now a strategic nonprofit affiliate of DAI Global Health. IntraHealth has a staff of over 550 employees working in 37 countries in Africa, the Americas, and Asia.
The Ministry of Health of Benin
’s
mission is to design and implement the state health policy in accordance with the laws and regulations in Benin as well as the vision and policy of the Government. The vision of the Ministry of Health is: "In 2025, Benin has a well-functioning health system based on public and private initiatives, individual and collective, for the permanent supply and availability of quality, equitable and accessible healthcare. Populations of all categories, based on the Values of Solidarity and Risk Sharing to meet all the health needs of the people of Benin.” The development of human resources is one of the five strategic areas in the National Health Policy. The MOH works with the
Department of Pharmacy, Drug and Diagnostic Research
, or DPMED (La Direction de la Pharmacie, du Médicament et des Explorations Diagnostiques) which is housed within the Ministry of Health. DPMED is responsible for developing and implementing the national logistics system for medicines, equipment and medical consumables. DPMED also works to prevent the sale of counterfeit drugs in the national medicine supply system.
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The PtD Secretariat in Copenhagen has hired Alexis Strader as the new Project Officer supporting the PtD Initiative. She will work closely with the Executive Manager, Dominique Zwinkels, to support the implementation of PtD’s mission, vision, and strategic goals, as well as PtD’s country-based approach. You can read more about Alexis on the
PtD website
.
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News from Partner Organizations
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HRH2030
USAID’s
HRH2030
program, the USAID Global Health Supply Chain Program-Procurement and Supply Management (
GHSC-PSM) Project, and the
People that Deliver Initiative
are collaborating to develop a comprehensive leadership capacity development program for high-level supply chain leaders. The program will strengthen the competencies of supply chain leaders and decision-makers to lead transformational change management processes and encourage staff to be leaders at their own level to strengthen public health supply chains for family planning, HIV, malaria, and other primary health services. Running over the course of several months, the program will feature a mix of online and in-person training and collective learning through discussion. HRH2030, PtD, and GHSC-PSM will pilot it with a cohort of supply chain leaders in Rwanda in the coming months. The leadership program expands upon the “Supply Chain Lead Lab” initiative developed by the USAID | DELIVER PROJECT and incorporates materials from Gavi’s Strategic Training Executive Program (STEP).
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I
nefficient pharmaceutical supply chains are partly to blame for a substantial proportion of the world still being without access to basic live-saving medicines, the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) says in a new report, published 8 May 2018. The report, “
Pharmacists in the supply chain: The role of the medicines expert in ensuring quality and availability”,
is released in a landscape of challenges such as substandard and falsified medicines, and a shortage of human resources in the health supply chain. “The need to ensure effective and safe medicines supply prompted FIP to take a close look at the actual role of pharmacists in pharmaceutical supply chains. This report aims to provide a foundation from which improvement can develop,” said FIP’s Working Group on Pharmacists in the Supply Chain co-chair Ulf Janzon.
PtD’s Board Chair, Dr. Lloyd Matowe, wrote the forward for the report, in which he reiterates the importance of HR for SCM: “I applaud the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) for producing this timely report that echoes PtD’s own agenda. PtD advocates for a holistic approach to developing workforce excellence in supply chain management. The evidence presented in this report strengthens our call for international and national level interventions that improve the demand and supply of qualified health supply chain professionals in low- and middle-income countries.”
Read the official press release
here
.
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As part of the South-South Knowledge Exchange (SoSoKE) Pamela Steele Associates (PSA) arranged for delegates from Kaduna, Niger, and Gombe states in Nigeria to participate in a trip to Kenya from 25 March to 29 March 2018. Held at PSA’s East and Horn of Africa (E&HA) Regional Office, delegates came to learn from KEMSA’s experience of developing a self-financing drug revolving fund. The success of the fund has ensured 80% availability of essential medicines to the public and is an example to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.
SoSoKE is a great opportunity for senior government officials and executives from Kenya and Nigeria to share knowledge and reduce dependency on external parties. You can access the report on the
PSA website.
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To further its goal to implement sustainable pharmaceutical supply management systems across Africa,
Pharmaceutical Systems Africa
(PSA), together with the
Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network
(EPN), organized a one-week course for consultants and Procurement and Supply Management (PSM) program staff on skills to manage in-country PSM systems.
The training course was held in Abuja, Nigeria from April 8–14, 2018 and drew 18 participants from several African countries, including Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. The course faculty had facilitators from international public health organizations as well as experts with decades of consulting experience. What is unique about this training was its focus on managing a major PSM challenge: the human-resource limitations of program staff. You can learn more about this training on the PSA
website and read the full announcement
here.
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PtD Executive Manager and Director of the
National Medical Supplies Fund in Sudan and PtD Board member Gamal Ali will be speaking at the
SAPICS Conference
taking place in June in Cape Town, South Africa. For the first time, SAPICS is incorporating a number of public health presentations into their program helping to create more dialogue among the public and private sector organizations interested in supply chains and logistics. In addition to PtD and NMSF, Deborah Dull from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) will be attending the conference.
SAPICS General Manager and newly elected PtD Board Member Jenny Froome explains that she was inspired by a quote from Professor Saracino, former Minister of Health, Côte d'Ivoire who said, "When you use a nurse or a physician as a logistician, you lose the nurse or physician and you don't get a good logistician!" For her, this simple quote effectively explains SAPICS’ focus on aligning all supply chain professionals in one forum.
Dominique and Gamal will be presenting a case study on Capacity Building for challenging supply chains, where they’ll discuss how public sector and private sector with exceptional local leadership can create effective supply chains in even the most challenging environments.
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In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) VillageReach is implementing supportive supervision for improved data collection for vaccine management at the health center level. Check out this
blog post
and
video
featuring Ruphin Ndumbala, a nurse at Boso-Mbuki health center in Equateur province, DRC, who discusses the skills and confidence he gained through the on-the-job supervision and support.
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14-18 May, Copenhagen, Denmark
UNICEF Supply Division
will hold a Health Systems Strengthening Workshop targeting UNICEF Country Offices (Program and Supply), Ministries of Health/Central Medical Stores and relevant partners. The objectives of this one-week workshop are to take stock of current capacity of supply chain in countries, support UNICEF countries and national governments to formulate and finalize country-level strategies and workplans related to sustainable supply chains for health systems strengthening, and advance UNICEF’s development and implementation of the National Supply Chain System Strengthening Strategy and accompanying Vision and Strategic Direction. People that Deliver Secretariat will be co- facilitating two workshops on Building and Strengthening the Supply Chain Workforce and Supply Chain Leadership. While this event is a closed event, PtD will be sharing updates beforehand and highlights during the event on social media. The key takeaways will be shared afterwards on social media and in our next newsletter.
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10-13 June, Cape Town, South Africa
The 40th Annual
SAPICS Conference
& Exhibition. The leading event in Africa for Supply Chain Professionals. PtD will be presenting (see the SAPICS update in the previous section)
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18-19 July, Dubai, UAE
The 10
th annual
Conference on Health and Humanitarian Logistics (HHL) will provide an open forum for (250+) professionals active in the global health and humanitarian sectors from around the world to discuss the challenges and new solutions in disaster preparedness and response, long-term development and humanitarian aid, and global health delivery.
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Our next PtD Newsflash will focus on women leaders in Supply Chain management. We’ll be featuring the work of partners and collaborators to recruit and retain women leaders in the health supply chain sector. If you have any interesting articles or resources on this topic, feel free to share them via email at info@peoplethatdeliver.org.
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