Consultancy Opportunity at Global Health Supply Chain Tanzania (GHSC)
GLOBAL HEALTH SUPPLY CHAIN PROGRAM TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE – TANZANIA
Consultancy – Opportunity
Statement of Work
Purpose: To develop an interim transition plan for CMS to articulate a priority road map for the semi-autonomous agency Period of Performance: December 1st 2022 to January 20th, 2023(35days) Place of Performance: Zanzibar
Background
The Zanzibar health care delivery system is divided into primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare services. While the management of primary health care services was devolved to the Local Government, this government system came to an end by July 2021. Subsequently, all primary, secondary, and tertiary health care services will fall under the Central Government managed by the Ministry of Health (MoH). Supply of essential medicines, reagents, and equipment is through the Zanzibar Health Commodity Supply Chain (ZHCSC) which integrates several institutions including institutions outside the health facilities themselves. The supply chain is supported by an Electronic Logistics Management Information System (eLMIS), which provides logistics management information necessary for effective decision-making. It is based on a system of records and reports on health commodity supply and consumption that are digitally maintained. The system is hitherto managed centrally by the MoH. The main role of CMS is to stock and supply essential medicines based on needs. The eLMIS supports key decision-making for the needs and order of medicines by making available information on stock and consumption patterns of medicines covering all the health facilities. The Procurement Unit in MoH does the procurement on requirements lodged by CMS through the Chief Pharmacist.
The Central Medical store is one of the institutions of the Ministry of Health Zanzibar responsible for promoting healthcare delivery by ensuring access to essential medicines and quality supplies needed to meet the needs of the people through health centers, territories, regions, and appeals. Before 2011 the Central Medical Stores was a unit under the Chief Pharmacist’s Office. In 2011 it was given the status of a department with two warehouses in Maruhubi (Unguja)and Micheweni (Pemba).
Currently, the CMS is responsible for receiving, storing, and distributing essential medicines, medical devices, laboratory diagnostic, and radiation diagnostic equipment as well as supplying various information on the use of medicines for assisting the Government to provide appropriate decisions.
The CMS has four divisions which are Customer service, Quality Control (Quality Assurance), Procurement and medication Management, and administration and finance.
While the HSCR found notable strengths, it also indicated that there is room for improvement in a few areas. The supply chain’s inadequate effectiveness and efficiency of the Central Medical Stores have become more significant recently, leading to a decline in the system’s performance. Some of the contributors to this decline have included broader health sector changes, including unintended consequences from decentralization within the health sector, local efforts to increase the involvement of the private pharmaceutical sector, and persistent underfunding due to internal system payment problems.
A central institution in the Supply Chain is CMS, an organization with responsibility for the storage and supply of health commodities. The Zanzibar Medicines Policy Implementation Plan 2016-2021 states, “Procurement of all pharmaceutical supplies for the public sector is handled through the Ministry of Health Procurement Unit, but in future will be carried out by CMS”. Being such a central organization in the supply of health commodities and in line with the magnitude of its mandate, CMS needs to be run in such a way that it is effective and efficient. It needs to be able to make rapid decisions, respond to needs and adapt accordingly. There is a need for this organization to be transformed into an effective and efficient organization to effectively provide the required support to the Supply Chain. This can be achieved if this current Department in MoH is set up as a semi-autonomous institution.
In December 2019, the MOH requested support from USAID to conduct the Holistic Supply chain Review (HSCR) of the public health sector supply chain. HSCR aimed to perform an end-to-end review of the health commodities supply chain in Zanzibar and propose viable options (priorities) to invest in and improve the performance of the supply chain. The MOH and GHSC-TA-TZ worked together to plan the review, and the review was conducted from March to September 2021.
Recognizing these challenges, in late 2021, the Ministry of Health decided to address the supply chain situation through the transformation of the CMS to become a semi-autonomous department with a full mandate to produce, procure, store, and distribute health commodities. The MOH submitted the draft bill to establish the CMS semi-autonomous to Balaza la Wawakilishi (BLW)for legislative proceedings.
Purpose:
Develop the interim transition plan to assist the transformation of the CMS into an effective and efficient semi-autonomous supply chain institution. The Transition plan intends to provide a set of guiding policies and interventions, along with corresponding implementation activities, to address the priority road maps required to achieve the semi-autonomous status of the CMS.
Objectives:
- Review progress and identify and execute key steps to ensure the plan’s successful completion.
- Conduct a Strategic workshop to develop the transition plan (define the roadmap, vision, principles, and strategic interventions) required to form a semi-autonomous CMS for the public sector’s supply chain.
- Identify desired objectives and best practices, and strategic interventions for implementation of the transition plan to achieve semi-autonomous
- Conduct Business Process Mapping to identify result areas, key activities for effecting coordination and informing the development of HR capacity and role profiles at CMS during the transition
Activities
- Develop and present an inception report
- Conduct desk review of reports on previous work on CMS governance structures and business mandate
- Develop the transition plan with a defined roadmap, vision, principles, and strategic interventions required to form a semi-autonomous CMS for the public sector’s supply chain
- A) Develop methods and tools for tracking the progress implementation of the interim transition plan
- Present preliminary interim transition plan to CMS/MOH
- Prepare a final interim transition plan and report with recommendations
- Schedule and conduct planning and meetings with CMS and other key supply chain stakeholders as needed.
Deliverables/Outputs
- An interim transition plan to achieve CMS semi-autonomous
- PowerPoint presentation of the Interim transition plan
Travel
There will be travel to Zanzibar for bth consultant and project staff.
If you are interested in applying this position please send your resume, cover letter to ghsc.recruitmenttz@gmail.com.
Deadline 21th November 2022
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