Supply Chain Management Challenges of COVID-19 Testing: The case of Health Facilities in Addis Ababa
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Date
2022-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The purpose of study is to assess supply chain management challenges of COVID-19 PCR testing reagents in health facilities in Addis Ababa city. Furthermore, the study has attempted to spotlight on the effects of these challenges on the testing services of these health facilities.
A mixed research approach was used in the study. All 26 health facilities actively participating in the testing service were included. Data were generated using questionnaire distributed to professionals participating (52) in the supply chain management of the reagents at these health facilities. The respondents were selected based on purposive sampling that included medical laboratory heads and logistics officers. The collected data has been analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics aided by SPSS version 23. Consequently, the findings indicated that the main challenges are inadequacy of refrigerated vehicles, inefficient storage space, disproportioning of reagents, stock out of reagents, inadequate training of professions, non-automation of the logistics management information system, emergency order of reagents, weak partnership between public and private facilities, logistics management information system being not integrated with laboratory management information system, stock out of reagents, shortage of trained professionals, interruption in testing services, elongated turnaround time and backlog of untested samples.
Findings from the regression analysis show that the challenges in distribution and transport, storage and handling, logistics management information system, inventory management, human resource management and public–private partnership collectively explain that 76.9 % of the change in average duration of service interruption.. Besides, it is revealed that the challenges in distribution and transport, inventory management and public–private partnership are statistically significant in explaining average duration of service interruption.
Finally, the study recommends that Public and private health facilities to give attention to partnership, health facilities to prepare trainings, platform be created and shared among all health facilities, focus given to supply chain management in the health sector and the ministry of health to participate in creating conducive environment for public-private partnership.
Key words: supply chain management challenges, testing service availability