News: Chemonics’ Executive Vice President wins 2019 ASCM Award of Excellence – Supply Chain Leader

On September 18, 2019, Chemonics Executive Vice President Jamey Butcher received the 2019 Award of Excellence – Supply Chain Leader from the Association for Supply Chain Management (ASCM), the global leader in supply chain learning, transformation, innovation, and leadership. Mr. Butcher oversees Chemonics’ global health supply chain portfolio, providing technical assistance and service delivery to…

News: Chemonics Recognized as Industry Innovators for Second Year in a Row

The Government Innovation Awards, presented by Federal Computer Week, Government Computer News, Washington Technology, and Defense Systems, showcases the best examples of innovation in government IT. This year, Chemonics earned recognition under the industry innovators category for its contributions and leadership to advance the private sector’s vital role in the government IT community. The award…

Cheikh Gassama

Mr Cheikh Sidya Gassama is currently Country Director for the USAID Global Health Supply Chain-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) project in Guinea. Prior to that he served as Country Director for USAID/GHSC-PSM project in Burundi, and other postings include Guinea and Senegal. He has more than 20 years’ experience of developing tools, implementing and capacity…

Joining Forces to Strengthen the Health and Social Services Systems

This post was adapted from one that originally appeared on the USAID HRH2030 program’s website. The numbers are staggering. One billion children under age 18 experience some form of physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse. With more than 2 billion children in the world, that means one child in every two is exposed to harmful situations…

Final Report: Sindh Reading Program

The Sindh Reading Program (SRP) is a five-year USAID-funded education project launched to improve early grade reading and establish formal and nonformal systems capable of continuing long-term support for reading. The project covered seven districts of the Sindh province (Larkana, Qambar-Shahdadkot, Kashmore, Jacobabad, Khairpur, Sukkur, and Dadu) and five towns of Karachi (Orangi, Layri, Kemari,…

Women’s Groups Leading the Way Towards Self-Reliance in Mali

On a recent visit to a rural village in Dioila district, part of the Koulikoro region in Mali, I met with the local women’s group to discuss how to promote family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) and how to increase access to these services in their community. There, surrounded by more than 100 volunteers who…

Critical Role of Female Community Health Workers Warrants Recognition

When the government of Bangladesh, a country with high rates of maternal mortality, invested in midwifery training programs in 2015, many of the newly minted midwives from the first cohort headed to Cox’s Bazar to provide services to thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing deadly violence in Myanmar. Though female community health workers (FCHWs) operate in…

5 Steps to Better Government Supply Chain Technology

Automated information systems are now widely used to manage the data that flows throughout a supply chain, from procuring a commodity, to manufacturing it, and, finally, to distributing it to a consumer. For example, modern retailers like Amazon can track a product from the point of manufacture to the customer’s door. However, in the developing…

OpenLMIS Deployment in Malawi Enhances Health Commodity Data Collection

Overtime, the Malawi Ministry of Health began to realize the impracticality of its outdated Supply Chain Manager (SCMgr) software, a stand-alone Microsoft Access-based application installed in 33 data entry sites, to collect essential health commodity logistics data nationwide. In February 2017, the USAID Global Health Supply Chain Program-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) project and the Malawi Ministry…

Ambient Climate Monitoring in Health Supply Chains

The frequency, duration, extent, and location of temperature excursions in the supply chain need to be better understood to inform the necessary adjustments to the products, their packaging, handling procedures, and the structures and vehicles with which products interact. The age of “the internet of things” (IoT) allows the use of smart technology in the…

Transportation Management System: TransIT and ePOD

In 2018, Chemonics developed a transportation management tool called TransIT, which is currently being used on the GHSC-PSM project. With engineering support provided by Chemonics’ partner Arizona State University, TransIT uses a cloud-based system that enables access to transportation information anytime and anywhere while minimizing infrastructure, set-up, and maintenance costs. The tool aggregates end-to-end data…

GHSC-PSM Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Procurement Guide

The USAID Global Health Supply Chain Program-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) project is working to explore utilizing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to move HIV/AIDS supplies and other health commodities through public health supply chains to serve hard-to-reach health facilities. The project is focusing this UAV initiative in rural settings with limited distribution systems and infrastructure that…