Tuesday, 28 July 2009
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Tunisia Explores New Supply Chain Solutions for Health by Patrick Lydon, WHO After several preliminary discussions, World Health Organization (WHO) and PATH will collaborate on a project with the Ministry of Health in Tunisia to demonstrate and validate: (a) approaches that address anticipated challenges in the supply chain system for vaccines and other health products; and (b) new solar technologies as a means of using renewable energy for cold chain technologies in selected field sites and health centers. Specifically, Tunisia is interested in optimizing their health commodities supply chain by integrating the procurement, warehousing, distribution and relevant information systems for vaccines and drugs. Currently, vaccines and drugs follow separate supply chains. The idea is to pilot how the supply chain for vaccines and other temperature sensitive health products could be streamlined and how the configuration of the current supply chain could be changed in order to improve vaccine availability, efficiency in distribution and quality of storage. In addition, Tunisia is keen on reducing it dependence on fossil fuels for energy and reducing its carbon footprint. Combined with the fact that remote health centers do not have access to reliable sources of energy, the collaboration will test new solar technologies that could be widely used in Tunisia to optimally run the vaccine cold chain system and respond to the needs of health centers. By the end of the project, Optimize and the Tunisian Ministry of Health will have information that can guide decision-making when it comes to developing an optimal vaccine supply chain for the future. We invite you to comment on or post a question relating to this article by clicking the “post reply” button on this page. You will have to log in or register, but the process is very simple. To link back to the Optimize e-newsletter, click here.
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