Improving access to vaccines and medical products: Building capacity in supply chain management in East Africa Promoting food and nutrition literacy using multi-media

Improving access to vaccines and medical products: Building capacity in supply chain management in East Africa

Vaccination, along with clean drinking water and sanitation, are public health interventions that have made the greatest contribution to improving health outcomes globally. Ensuring access to vaccines for all populations is an ongoing challenge, however, with the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic highlighting global inequities in financing, distribution and administration of COVID-19 vaccines.

Although immunisation coverage across Africa has greatly increased over the past few decades, with corresponding reductions in disease mortality and morbidity, coverage rates in many countries are far from reaching their national targets. In addition, although national estimates of routine coverage are assessed annually, they conceal heterogeneities in coverage and preclude an assessment of local barriers to vaccination and areas of weakness within vaccine delivery systems. Over the past few years, vaccine access in these countries has been expanded through the efforts of global agencies – including the World Health Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and GAVI, The Vaccine Alliance – though gaps in supply chain systems remain a stumbling block. In March 2016 the East African Community (EAC) Regional Centre of Excellence for Vaccines, Immunization and Health Supply Chain Management (RCE-VIHSCM) was launched. Based at the School of Public Health at the University of Rwanda in Kigali, it is a partnership with the EAC partner states, the global community, UN agencies and collaborative universities from the region and beyond. The vision of the RCE is to become an autonomous, well-recognised, top-class, regional ‘knowledge hub’, providing high quality pre- and in-service training to pharmacists and others involved in supply chain management at various levels of the health system. Its main purpose it to disseminate best practices in vaccines, immunisation and health supply chain management.

SOPH’s involvement

Building on an existing relationship with the University of Rwanda and having experiences of developing a blended Master of Public Health (MPH) programme, the School of Public Health (SOPH) was contracted by Health Research for Action (hera), Belgium, to provide expertise to support the University’s establishment of the RCE. From 2016 to 2019 we assisted with the development and co-ordination of short course training and the continuous development of training support for staff developing their Master programme. The team was led by Dr Hazel Bradley and included Prof Richard Laing, Jennifer Birkett and Ziyanda Mwanda. To this end, four members of the University of Rwanda team visited the SOPH in 2017 where they participated in the Medicines Supply Chain Management short course at Winter School. They were also introduced to UWC’s learning management system and several of the e-learning tools that the SOPH has developed and used in its distance learning programmes. The SOPH team’s subsequent visits to Rwanda consolidated this learning through workshops to build capacity and transfer skills to our colleagues regarding the development of on-line learning materials and individual mentoring. We also provided support to on-line teaching and support staff working on the Master in Health Supply Chain Management. The first cohort of Master students, comprising largely of pharmacists already working in supply chain management positions in EAC countries, graduated in 2019. The intention is that they will provide much needed expertise in the various facets of supply chain management in their countries – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda; and that this, in turn, will lead to improved immunisation coverage and, ultimately, improved health outcomes for their populations.

The RCE at the University of Rwanda is supported by the German Development Bank (KfW) who have agreed to additional funding of Euro14 mill for a further four years (2021 – 2024) to establish the RCE as a centre for digital teaching and learning for the EAC and beyond - in health supply chain management.