📋 Tender Overview
Ensuring access to safe and effective health supplies requires quality assurance across the pharmaceutical value chain. International and national supply chain operators are responsible for maintaining quality from the place of manufacture until the product is in the hands of the client, which can be accomplished with traceability processes.
BACKGROUND
Since 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees have fled from Myanmar to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, joining hundreds of thousands who have been living in refugee camps and local Bangladeshi host communities.The refugees live in crowded, temporary shelters and rely heavily on humanitarian aid.This protracted situation prevents host communities from using arable land, which threatens their livelihoods. Both refugees and host community members, a total of 1.52 million individuals, have pressing and often unmet health care needs.
The International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) health program in Bangladesh consists of four primary health care facilities, one basic emergency obstetric and newborn care center, 47 sexual and reproductive health clinics, and 13 referral hubs.The IRC also supports four government upazila (sub-district) health complexes.
PRACTICE
Ensuring quality in the health supply chain is a critical aspect of IRC’s service provision. It uses end-to-end traceability of pharmaceutical products to ascertain the quality of all medicines that enter the supply chain in Bangladesh. In addition to complying with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), IRC is committed to continuous learning through a systematized process based on field observations (Figure 1).
By following the steps in Figure 1, IRC helps prevent the distribution of counterfeit and sub-standard pharmaceutical products, which improves patient safety and builds trust in the health supply chain. Factors that enable end-to-end traceability include:
• Human resources: IRC develops and nurtures staff motivation and skills and provides competitive pay, benefits, and opportunities for advancement to attract and retain staff.
