Strengthening Nigeria supply chain system through Warehouse Visibility Project

An effective supply chain reduces the direct cost of providing patient care, reduces counterfeit drugs and waste, including the availability of medicines, family planning choice and vaccines. Whilst the warehousing of medicines is a critical component of the supply chain for the provision of medicines in any system, all the states in the country have Central Medical Stores (CMS) which serve as warehousing units for the storage and distribution of health commodities in the states.

Over the years, warehouses in Nigeria have been laden with several challenges, including inadequate infrastructure, lack of proper storage conditions, staff attrition, product pilferage, loss of commodities due to poor expiry management, and wastages including little or no visibility in Warehouse (WH) operations at the federal and state levels.

To address public health commodity wastages across States in Nigeria, Isaac Adewole, Minister of Health (HMH) requested the support of Africa Resource Centre for Supply Chain (ARC) Nigeria across three key areas: “Support warehouse infrastructural upgrade of 31 states CMSs in Nigeria, set up a visibility platform in the HMH’s office to provide real-time online status and performance of CMSs across Nigeria through a monitoring dashboard and institute a stakeholder engagement forum to foster ownership and advocate for fund allocation to the states warehouse improvement and measure progress,” he outlined.

ARC Nigeria, a partnership of Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, supported the Project Management Unit (PMU) which was set up to advance the request of the minister who elevated the project to a Special Ministerial Intervention in developing a strategic roadmap for the project.

The roadmap was broken into four phases: capacity development for governance and oversight, warehouse rapid assessment, dashboard development and stakeholders’ engagement for WH infrastructural upgrade.

Presenting a progress report on the Warehouse Visibility and Governance Project (WVGP), Linus Odoemene, National Coordinator, National Product Supply Chain Management Programme (NPSCMP), disclosed that most CMS in the States were below recommended world standards, urging them to show commitment towards improving their medical warehouses.

“Based on the assessment done, there were nine Level-1 non-pharma-grade warehouses, twelve Level-2 warehouses, three Level-3 warehouses and four Level-4 warehouses which were termed as ‘poor systems’ due to its current poor infrastructural state. Ranking the average assessment scores per geopolitically, the South-South region was ranked 1st with an average assessment score of 75%, followed by the North-west (65%); South-West (60%); South-East (58%); North-Central (58%) and lastly the North-East (50%)” Odoemene explained.

Responding, Azuka Okeke, Regional Director, ARC explained out that the output of the assessment conducted by National Supply Chain Integration Project (NSCIP) and State Ministry of Health served as baseline information to determine the current state of the warehouses in the country.

“The tools used for the assessment were existing tools from the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN) and NSCIP which assess different aspects of the operations of the warehouses. In addition, a supplementary tool was developed by ARC Supply Chain team to evaluate specific areas that were excluded in the tools mentioned earlier,” Okeke maintained.

Isaac Adewole noted that when the project unit was established, the idea was to ensure that medical stores are upgraded to International Standards.

“I do not want to be a minister that does not know what’s going on outside. That is the case for the Warehouse Visibility and Governance Project. Our warehouses in Abuja and Lagos have been upgraded to international standards with support from donor organizations. An opportunity has now been provided to States warehouses to be upgraded. I will be willing to facilitate a working relationship between states that are ready and international donors,” the Minister added.

ANTHONIA OBOKOH