Supporting the EU with health system strengthening in Tunisia

Overview:

Funded by the European Union in Tunisia in partnership with the Ministry of Health, the Essaha Aziza Programme aims to expand universal coverage of essential front-line care to all citizens across 13 governorates in the country. The programme started in 2017 and continues through 2025.

Challenge:

The remote nature of the locations, movement restrictions due to Covid-19, and the associated infrastructure, communication and transportation challenges required thoughtful planning.

Our response was to establish robust communication between all key contractual players including the EU delegation, Ministry of Health in Tunisia and end-user sites, as well as maintaining on-the-ground presence, to engage with key stakeholders directly.

CASE STUDIES:

Helping UNDP reach socially vulnerable people in Kazakhstan

Delivery of Customized Covid-19 Medical Kits

Overview:

In 2021, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Kazakhstan was looking for support to provide customised Covid-19 medical kits to socially vulnerable people during the pandemic as a means of preventing the further spread during the pandemic.

The initiative was under the joint Covid-19 emergency response project of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Government of Kazakhstan.

Challenge:

Solution:

We were contracted to supply, install and commission 36 lines of medical equipment as well as provide enduser training. The programme covered over 200 locations in the country. The product line is wide-ranging and includes laboratory, imaging, dental and endoscopy equipment.

Impact:

Despite the size and complexity of the programme, we successfully delivered the required medical equipment, on time and to budget. This included mammography equipment in three key regions and full dental clinic delivery with dental X-Ray in all the 13 governorates.

All equipment passed the required compliance and conformity checks and met EU quality standards. For the technical and funding partners, this represents a major milestone in the project lifecycle and sets the foundation for the next phase of the program.

The medical kits needed to contain items that were in high demand globally including thermometers, masks, disinfectants, and non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs. It was during a time when source countries were highly challenged by lockdowns, product scarcity and flight cancellations.

Solution:

We successfully sourced, qualified, and consolidated high-demand items to create a customized medical kit that was more compact than prior solutions. A strategically placed control tower provided detailed live tracking and day-to-day updates to allow for full visibility during the 60 days project execution cycle.

Furthermore, customised solutions with detailed labelling to address cultural and linguistic sensitivities were created for better product acceptance.

Impact:

International SOS supplied and delivered 250,000 customised medical kits in support of the programme, offering optimized packaging and reducing cargo volumes by 65% without compromising product quality.

GSC: What is your interface with the pharma and cold supply chain?

GA: Cold chain supply is our important responsibility as we deal with medicines, vaccines but also other type of product like lab reagent which needs to move under the cold chain conditions.

We deal with all types of different temperature (ambient, 2 to 8 degree C, -20 degree etc.…) and we manage the endto-end solutions which requires that we provide a solution on the freight movement including the last mile which can be challenging depending on the region of the world that we are supplying.

Cold chain capacities are unfortunately not well balanced around the world which makes us design tailor made solution.

GSC: Do you perform or oversee your logistics and supply chain services or is it outsourced?

GA: Our key expertise is in the solutions we provide for our customers related to medical product and services. We build delivery and execution solution thanks to our experienced team of supply chain professional and then proceed with the execution of the project.

Depending on the solutions, we worked with network of freight forwarders and 3PLs partner across the continent to enable us, consolidation, assembly, last mile delivery, and other logistics considerations.

GSC: Provide us briefly an outline and road map of how systems and processes work?

GA: We have different layers of working, namely operational, tactical, and strategic. Our operational process occurs through our ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) which is linked to a data warehouse and a control tower to have a view on our tactical level.

Automating those two levels allows us to focus on the strategic level to design the best solution for each project we must deliver. Form the moment we get a PO (Purchase Order) from our customer, all the different steps (supplier follow up, assembly, stock management and final delivery) toward the delivery are optimized to have systematic ways of working including automation whenever possible.

The status is available through different dashboard link to our ERP and for the delivery we have a control tower which allows to track all the movement.

GSC: What is your outlook for 2023?

GA: We have been focusing on the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) for several years now, and 2023 will be the year where will emphasize on this. It is well aligned with the Year of Sustainability in the UAE.

GSC: What are the opportunities and challenges going forward?

GA: Having a global footprint, the constant change in local regulations poses a key challenge. Striving for more automation bring the challenges of data privacy which crucial in our industry.

Last but not the least, the turbulences faced by the global supply chain is also the proverbial ‘Sword of Damocles’ which puts the spotlight on risk management and visibility in the supply chain. By building strong partnership with the different players and ‘glocalizing’ our sourcing, we hope to be less dependent on freight availability and price fluctuations.

The challenges open opportunities, though. Thanks to our extremely professional team, we are able to tailormake all our executions solutions which match exactly our customer requirements in term of product quality, delivery commitment and cost management.

Having gone through a digital transformation, we are also able to provide live and real-time information to our customers which enhances collaboration. We are also presently going through a transformation to provide full traceability to our customer, following the model of serialization and aggregation of the pharma industry.