By Wendy Prosser
VillageReach Program Manager
USA and Mozambique
How many times have you seen “other duties as required” on a job description? It infers any random thing that may not fit perfectly into other well-defined responsibilities but still needs to get done, so there is a high likelihood that it may land on your desk to take care of.
In the Mozambique health system, this has become the catchall phrase for health workers. They are tasked with numerous responsibilities including the supply chain function, resulting in a crisis for human resources for health. A maternal and child health nurse, particularly in a rural area, is responsible for providing antenatal care, assisting with deliveries, vaccinating children, managing data for all health clinic activities, and completing requisitions of commodities to keep drug supplies well stocked.
Basically, a nurse in a rural area becomes a Jack of All Trades and a master of none.
Professor Saracino, the former Minister of Health in Côte d’Ivoire, summed it up well:
“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!”
In this sense, becoming a “Master of ONE” as opposed to “NONE,” is one aspect of the Dedicated Logistics System (DLS), a different approach to supply chain management that VillageReach is developing, through the Final 20 Project supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The DLS has shifted supply chain management responsibilities to the hands of a few dedicated personnel. The DLS moves supply chain management functions as high up in the supply chain as is geographically feasible, consolidating tasks at the provincial level so that limited resources available can be dedicated. This frees up a health worker’s time to focus on patient care.
When I visit Mozambique and accompany a vaccine distribution, I see the benefits of this system firsthand. The dedicated logistician checks records and manages the stock while the nurse cares for the many dozens of children waiting for her. The DLS has reduced lines and waiting times, enabled the health workers to focus adequately on primary care, and dramatically improved the reliability of the supply chain, thus increasing trust in the health system.
We have documented this approach, and the role of human resource management in improving vaccine supply chains in the Reaching the Final 20 Policy Paper Series, available here.
For more information on the DLS, and VillageReach work in Mozambique
About the Author: As Program Manager, Wendy Prosser is responsible for the design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of health system program for VillageReach in Mozambique. Efforts in Mozambique seek to streamline vaccine logistics with an improved logistics management information system and transport services. Wendy has over a decade of global health experience in program development and management, research and analysis, capacity building, and behavior change communications. This experience has taken her to Mozambique, Malawi, Angola, Kenya, and South Africa in various public health settings, starting with Peace Corps in Cape Verde. Wendy holds a MPA in International Development and Global Health from the University of Washington.