This post originally appeared on the USGLC blog on July 8, 2020. Despite the multiple mechanisms that exist to respond to infectious disease threats, including the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations and the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), only 11 percent of countries have plans to dispense medical countermeasures during health emergencies and 27 percent have an updated…
An independent, mid-point review of the GHSC-PSM project, implemented by a Chemonics-led consortium, recently released its findings and recommendations in this report. The review looked at GHSC-PSM’s global and in-country work in HIV, malaria, family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH), and maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) and assessed the project’s achievement of expected results while identifying opportunities…
Over the last 20 years, global efforts have dramatically reduced the malaria burden thanks to innovative partnerships and sustained funding to scale-up effective interventions and use better data for decision-making. More countries are closer than ever to elimination. But there is still work to be done, especially as new public health threats such as…
Ana de Paiva is the director of operational excellence of Connexi, a Chemonics company. She has spent the last nine years working with USAID’s global health supply chains. She was first exposed to supply chain management a decade ago during her graduate program in international development at the American University in Washington, D.C., and has…
Steve Thomas is a logistics and supply chain expert with more than 35 years of experience. Steve is well-versed in international logistics and currently serves as a warehousing and inventory logistics advisor for the USAID Global Health Supply Chain Program-Procurement and Supply Management project. He previously worked in China, where he was the vice president…
Research has shown that planning for and investing in emergency preparedness in advance – and building resilient supply chains – reduces the amount of response funds needed and allows for a quick response to control, contain, and, hopefully, stop a disease before it spreads. As COVID-19 continues to spread across the world and within countries,…
Health product manufacturers and shippers go to great lengths to ensure appropriate storage conditions for cold-chain health commodities, using specialized equipment including vehicles with temperature-controlled truck beds or refrigerated shipping containers. On the other hand, the storage conditions for ambient (non-cold chain) products are not well documented or understood, despite international good distribution practices, which…
Millions of children in Pakistan are at risk of neonatal, infant, and under five mortality due to untreated diarrhea and pneumonia. In response, the Government of Pakistan and other stakeholders have deployed various progressive interventions to improve maternal and child health care in Pakistan with the goal of ending preventable childhood deaths due to pneumonia…
In Alexander Fleming’s 1945 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, in honor of his discovery of penicillin, he included a cautionary tale of a young man who was plagued by a sore throat and cough during a leisurely walk home after a long day’s work. The man in Fleming’s story passes a local pharmacy and purchases antibiotics.…