How ARC Nigeria is Revolutionising Nigeria’s Medical Supply Chain System
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), access to medicines and health commodities is one of six major building blocks of an effective health system.
Indeed, the role of supply chain and logistics systems through which medicines and health commodities are delivered to the last mile cannot be overemphasised. Evidently, the goals of the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) to deliver access to required health services of sufficient quality cannot be achieved without access to medicines and health commodities.
Equally, the manpower that oversees, manages and operates supply chain and logistics systems become paramount. Functional supply chain systems manned by capable logisticians across tiers ensure health facilities are adequately stocked at all times, ensuring availability of commodities and access to healthcare at the last mile.
Nigeria ranks low on logistics competence evidenced from the World Bank’s 2016 Logistics Performance Index (LPI) report, which ranks Nigeria within the bottom 2 quintiles, characterised by very low availability of skilled logisticians, especially in mid-level management roles.
As a result, the Africa Resource Centre (ARC) Nigeria was conceived as partnership between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria (PHN) – as a central resource centre to foster, mobilise and channel expertise and capacity within the private sector and academia to strengthen public health supply chains across the country.
ARC Nigeria primarily seeks to deliver impact by raising the performance of health supply chains to increase the availability of medicines and health commodities at the last mile – through capacity enhancements of public health logisticians, supply chain process improvements, among others.
Therefore, one major focus area of the ARC is to support effective development of local talent pools adequately trained to manage and operate public health supply chain and logistics systems, as well as for private sector supply chain systems in Nigeria and subsequently within West Africa. In effect, the ARC seeks to foster a supply chain revolution in Nigeria by facilitating local and international partnerships to foster in-country capacity for sustainable supply chain education, research and innovation.
Since December 2016, the ARC has initiated collaborations with several private sector companies to facilitate transfer of supply chain expertise to strengthen public health supply chain systems. Worthy of note are successful collaborations that the ARC facilitated between Proctor & Gamble, UPS, Fidson Pharma and the National Warehousing Advisory Council (NWAC) under the Federal Ministry of Health and National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) respectively.
Currently, the ARC is also collaborating with multiple academic institutions in Nigeria, such as, the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), University of Lagos (UNILAG), Nnamdi Azikiwe University (NAU), Awka and Lagos State University (LASU) to foster educational and research capacities on supply chain management. These collaborations are targeted at strengthening existing programmes or establishing new supply chain management degree and certificate programmes, through curriculum strengthening, faculty exchanges, joint research projects, student internships, and so on.
According to Pharm Azuka Okeke, Country Director, ARC Nigeria, “ARC aims to foster more partnerships with universities across the country within the next three years. We are confident that these collaborations will lead to a sustainable increase in the number of adequately trained professionals with practical skills ready to make impact in public health and private sector supply chain systems in Nigeria.”
She continued: “ARC Nigeria’s medium to long term plan to spur development of local talent involves setting up a premier academic Center of Excellence on supply chain in partnership with local and international universities to ensure even distribution and promotion of supply chain knowledge and research across Nigeria.
“To this end, the ARC is also partnering with the Massachusetts Institute Technology’s Centre of Transport Logistics, MIT CTL, a leading global institute on supply chain management education and research, with proven track-record in setting up supply chain excellence centers around the world, connected through the MIT Global SCALE Network.”