By Emerald Awa-Agwu and Mohammed-Faosy Adeniran
In the last five years, the world has seen a progressive rise in public health emergencies, leading to an increased need for humanitarian aid and relief 1.
During humanitarian response activities, large quantities of supplies including food and non-food items, essential medicines and even, human resources need to be deployed to the areas affected by the crises, within the shortest possible time. Sound logistics and warehousing infrastructure becomes imperative, as it could reduce the lead time and cost of transporting essential supplies to these areas; thus alleviating the disaster2.
Over the years, supply chain professionals have had to strategize to develop resilient, context-appropriate approaches to respond to a wide spectrum of crises in different geographical locations. Warehousing is an essential portion of these approaches as they can greatly enhance a health system’s capacity to be prepared for emergencies by storing needed supplies in central locations so that they can be distributed more promptly, in case of an emergency. During an emergency, they help to shorten the time spent getting aid to the affected people and thus reduce negative outcomes such as hunger, injury and/or death.
Here are some examples of how warehousing and logistics are being used to improve emergency response:
The Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) Outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
The EVD outbreak in DRC started in August 2018 and for the response program led by the World Health Organization (WHO), the major challenge was getting medical and non-medical supplies to the DRC’s conflict-affected Northeastern region. To address this challenge, the WHO set up secondary hubs in Beni and Butembo towns (within the affected area), and five other district warehouses to receive supplies from the main warehouse hubs in Kinshasa (the capital city of DRC) and in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.
The complex logistics of Ebola response. Photo credit: World Health Organization
Through these hubs, the WHO has coordinated the storage and distribution of 17 million gloves, over 2 million surgical masks, 909 thousand gowns and over 200 thousand doses of Ebola vaccine, to enhance the Ebola response operations. The combined volume of these supplies is equivalent to two Olympic-sized swimming pools but it has been worth it. More than 1000 people have survived EVD in DRC and over 257,000 have been vaccinated.
Natural disasters in China
China is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. Between 2006 and 2010, the country recorded 90,000 deaths and economic losses worth more than 160 billion dollars as a result of natural disasters 3. In line with their 2015 Guidance on Strengthening the Construction of Natural Disasters Relief Supplies Reserve System, victims must receive basic relief items within 12 hours after the disaster breaks out.
To achieve this, the Chinese government set up 24 relief supplies warehouses in cities around the country, while local authorities at the county to province-level were expected to replicate similar warehouses, especially in hazard-prone locations, taking the population distribution to account 4.
The Conflict in Northeast Nigeria
Since 2014, Northeast Nigeria has been plagued with insurgent activities, heightening the food and nutrition insecurity of vulnerable populations, and leading to the displacement of 1.92 million people. Another 7.7 million people in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states require humanitarian assistance. The World Food Programme (WFP) has supported national and state emergency efforts in Nigeria since 2015, by providing food and cash aid to 1.2 million internally-displaced people on a monthly basis.
Laborers loading food items in the Kano warehouse managed by eHA
During an emergency, the ultimate goal is to contain the emergency within the shortest possible time so that the loss of lives and property, as well as the disruption of economic activities, can be minimized. In such scenarios, both supply-side actors (health system administrators and providers) and demand-side stakeholders (affected populations and members of the general public) need to have the commodities that they need to respond to the emergency and to recover from the emergency, respectively.