Assessment of Cold Chain Challenges of Vaccines to ensure Last-Mile Delivery: The Case of Ethiopian Pharmaceutical Supply Service (EPSS), Addis Ababa Hub-I.
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Date
2024-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The cold supply chain systems are critical for overcoming the challenges encountered along the supply chain and ensuring the availability of vaccines at service delivery points. The availability of safe vaccines broadly influenced by various factors such as the industrial landscape, regulatory framework, political climate, economic conditions, environmental factors, technological advancements, infrastructure and the role of global players. Pharmaceutical companies have greater responsibilities on maintaining and distributing these temperature-sensitive biological products and vaccines through stringent cold supply chain systems by implementing the following strategies to address safety and integrity thus securing the availability of products to customers by strengthening robust cold chain management, temperature monitoring and control, quality assurance, risk assessment and contingency planning, regulatory compliance, continuous improvement, training and collaboration to preserve the potency of heat sensitive pharmaceuticals and vaccines throughout the supply chain thereby ensuring their availability to customers while supporting public healthcare services. Hence, it was important to assess how Ethiopian Pharmaceutical Supply Service (EPSS) Addis Ababa Hub-I manage and distribute vaccines for health facilities by addressing the challenges of transport systems, storage facilities, packaging, technical capacity and facilities' technology which can comprehensively maintain these temperature-sensitive products to ensure their integrity and patient safety. The general objective of the study was aimed to assess cold chain challenges of vaccines to ensure last-mile delivery in case of Ethiopian Pharmaceutical Supply Service (EPSS) Addis Ababa Hub-I while the specific objectives were to determine how storage conditions in EPSS Addis Ababa Hub-I affects vaccines distribution at last-mile; to determine the challenges of transport systems to ensure vaccines availability at service delivery point; to evaluate the challenges of Packaging for realizing effective vaccines distribution; to examine the extent to which technical capacity of staffs influence on vaccines cold supply chain management practices, and finally to assess the capacity of technology solution to support decision makers in planning ,temperature monitoring, transport and storage of vaccines within hub and woreda health offices/ health facilities. Mixed research approach and descriptive research design was used because it is non-experimental and studies on the relationship between non manipulated variables in a natural setting. The study was carried out in EPSS Addis Ababa Hub-I and 70 health facilities out of 236 which are registered and licensed by Food and Drug Control Authority (FDA). A sample size of 152 participants was selected out of a population of 472 staffs from different facilities consisting of automatically included 7 supply chain team coordinators and EPI unit staffs , and 145 employees from hub supply chain management staffs , and facilities store man, child and maternal healthcare service unit staffs were selected through simple random sampling techniques. The data was collected by using structured self administered questionnaires from sampled respondents and alternatively through web based data collecting tools (Google Form) and then analyzed and interpreted by using statistical analysis methods .Correlation analysis was done to examine the relationship between the dependent and independent variables whereby it was found that packaging, technical capacity and facilities’ technology have extreme strong positive relationship and influence to ensure safe vaccines last-mile delivery. The final research findings were presented in figures, tables and graphs. This is also one of the first studies in the issues of direct vaccines distribution and cold chain challenges along the supply chain from central or branch warehouses to service delivery points at last-mile. Additionally, the paper offers important avenues for future research.
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The cold supply chain systems