During the COVID-19 pandemic, knowing how to effectively manage a medical supply network is – more than ever – critical to successfully delivering humanitarian, medical services.

It is vital to understand how to navigate complex medical networks.  It is critical to know how to effectively source, store and distribute medicines. These variables and many more are fundamental to ensuring these networks function optimally so health workers can save lives. 

Since the inception of the Pharmaceutical Supply Management (PSM) training in 2018, HELP Logistics has conducted classroom trainings for 300+ participants in different countries across Africa and throughout East Asia. This comprehensive technical training has been an eye opener for many logisticians.

Moving this format to an online training, HELP and its partner ARC delivered this training to 34 participants in Nigeria enrolled in the ARC Supply Chain Hub program. A variety of tools; including zoom; dynamic games; and online platforms were used to engage participants. The month long training finished with an 8-hour DMAIC session where groups of students used the learnings to collaboratively design solutions to real-world, critical issues in their medical supply networks – visualizing these problems and solutions through supply chain drawing; using for example Ishikawa (Fishbone) models to visualize the issues.