Increasing access to essential medicines and vaccines is critical to achieving universal health coverage. This, of course, is no simple task, especially in Africa where the challenges, both logistical and financial, are real,1 and the solutions are complex and varied. But to truly ensure health products are available when and where they are needed requires considering the journey.
Increasing access also means ensuring quality transport in the distribution and storage of life-saving medicines and vaccines.
Quality Transport
VillageReach’s Outsourced Transport Resource Center (OTRC) developed the Transport Quality Management Toolkit to guide African governments and local private pharmaceutical distributors in managing transportation quality, whether those transport services are in-house or outsourced. As foreign aid is reduced in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), governments and the local private sector need tools and resources to manage their supply chains effectively and sustainably. This toolkit offers a set of guidelines and best practices to manage and improve the quality of transport services within the health supply chain. It helps users maintain the quality and integrity of the medicines and vaccines being transported and stored throughout the distribution process, from the national warehouses all the way down to the hardest-to-reach communities.
The toolkit is aligned with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Good Storage and Distribution Practice (GSDP) standards. It includes several important aspects for managing health product transport; including product safety, training guidelines for transport staff, customer satisfaction, performance management and risk assessment. It educates stakeholders, emphasizing the preservation, integrity and safety of medicines and vaccines to protect patient well-being.
Managing the Environment
Medicines and vaccines are extremely vulnerable to environmental changes in temperature, humidity and light. Therefore, these products must be kept under ideal conditions at each stage of transport or the products that reach patients will be unusable. For example:
- Failure to comply with temperature standards during transport, particularly for vaccines and biological products, can compromise their safety and efficacy;
- Poor handling practices during transport can damage medicines, rendering them unusable;
- Insufficient tracking and security can result in the loss of medicines or theft during transport; and
- Inadequate packaging or poor separation of medicines can lead to contamination during transport, making them dangerous for patients.
The OTRC’s Transport Quality Management Toolkit is designed to help users avoid these risks and ensure any in-country transporters comply with WHO GSDP standards. The toolkit was developed based on the OTRC’s experience with providing outsourced transport technical assistance to African governments and local private sector transporters across 15 African countries. This toolkit, however, is not only for entities managing outsourced transport but can be used by governments and local private pharmaceutical distributors transporting health products with their own transport fleet (i.e., trucks, boats, motorbikes).
Benefits for Everyone
When transport quality is managed well, the benefits are far-reaching. Ensuring quality transport means patients receive safe and effective medicines, leading to better health outcomes and increasing their confidence in the national health system. Delivering quality pharmaceuticals enables health care workers to provide effective treatments without worrying about compromised medicines. Private pharmaceutical distributors that comply with GSDP and are WHO GSDP certified can grow their business through increased visibility as reliable transporters. Finally, for logistics providers (such as private sector transporters), adhering to quality standards enhances service reliability, fosters long-term partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and governments and creates new business opportunities.
Getting health products to people requires a lot of logistics and planning. As the global health community strives to build more responsive health systems, stakeholders must remember it is not just about getting products to the last mile – it is also about how they get there.
To learn more about this toolkit, contact Angelina Cumba, Outsourced Transport Lead, angelina.cumba@villagereach.org or Cedric Ekembe, Outsourced Transport Advisor, cedric.ekembe@villagereach.org.