RYAN CHIGOCHE
The International Association of Public Health Logisticians (IAPHL) will next week hold a medical logistics training workshop for practitioners in Zimbabwe to equip them with the current knowledge of the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) Good Distribution Practices (GDP) guidelines.
The workshop will kick off on July 25, 2022 in Harare and will run for the next five weeks. The training programme will include a practical visit to Bak Logistics in the capital Harare.
“The training programme will equip the local logisticians with current knowledge of Good Storage and Distribution Practices Guidelines. These guidelines apply to all individuals that deal in the storage and distribution of medicinal products from the manufacturer of medicinal products to the person dispensing or providing medicines directly to the patient. This includes all parties involved in different stages of the supply chain of medical products,” IAPHL president, Pasi Sirewu, told Business Times.
He said the workshop will look at the logistics context in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa and discuss “how best we can move cargo”.
“Zimbabwe is a land locked country and we depend on Durban, Beira and Maputo ports. These days the Durban corridor has challenges. Firstly, it was floods now there were xenophobic attacks towards truck drivers. These have an effect on logistics,” he said, adding, “We will look at other available solutions”.
“We also have challenges of congestion at our ports of entry especially Beitbridge resulting in demurrage charges which increase the cost of bringing cargo into Zimbabwe.
With this training we will look at all available alternatives to manage these problems.”
Sirewu said medical logisticians will look at how they will outsource logistics services and also encourage each other to strictly adhere to section 5.17 of the MCAZ guideline which speaks specifically to outsourcing of services.
The GDP guidelines were initially put forward by the World Health Organisation in 2005 to address risks inherent in the supply chain of medicinal products chief among them the flooding of illicit, substandard, spoilt medicines in the market and MCAZ then adopted and localized them last year.
According to section 5.17,health logisticians are now allowed to outsource services.
It is a requirement for service providers to meet various requirements on GDPs so that quality products reach the consumer cubing influx of illicit medicines in the country.
More so on outsourcing services such as freight forwarding, transportation, warehousing, distribution and customs clearing, the service providers are required to also have knowledge of GDP practices of pharmaceutical products and a written contract detailing GDP Compliance for each party must be made available before signing of the contract.
Before signing the contract, the contract giver should carry out an audit at the contractor’s premises and the contractor should have a GDP policy and GDP Manual.
IAPHL was founded in 2007 as an international association dedicated to improving public health supply chain management and commodity security, providing professional development opportunities to public health logisticians and promoting the use of local and regional expertise.
IAPHL is headquartered in Washington DC in America and is operating in more than 147 countries worldwide including Zimbabwe.
The Zimbabwe chapter was launched on May 23, 2019 with the aim of supporting and domesticating public health logistics and humanitarian supply chain management in the country.
