From February 27th – March 1st, UNICEF Supply Chain Division organized the 2019 edition of the System Design Summit at the regional Unicef country office in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. Prof. Nico Vandaele represented the Access-To-Medicines research team upon an invitation to act as a facilitator and expert in the field of immunization supply chain design.

Decisions about immunization supply chain distribution networks, storage, human resources, equipment, planning, monitoring, data etc. are complex and interconnected. These kinds of decisions require data, analysis, and a clear picture of the end-to-end supply chain, including the inherent relationships between storage, distribution, inventory, and product characteristics.System Design is a process that creates the plan, or blueprint, for how the supply chain should run, and how all the components of the supply chain system fit together and interact.

This supply chain is part of a broader and even more complex immunization system, where behavioral, contextual, cultural and social elements are considered in a human-centered design thinking approach. In this way, feasible and bought-in scenarios for the future can be explored, assessed, and submitted to the decision makers.

Therefore, in its third year, the System Design Summit used the Immunization Supply Chain (iSC) as an entry point but involved evenly stakeholders like donors, partners, private sector and academic institutions from both immunization as well as fromother public health commodities supply chains including participation from essential medicines, nutrition, humanitarian/ emergency responses, HIV/TB/Malaria, maternal/newborn/child health, etc.

The Summit provided an opportunity for participants to share experiences and lessons from advocating for and implementing system design activities. It enabled interaction on progress and challenges with uptake, analysis and implementation of these activities and facilitate better collaboration in defining sustainable strategies and activities.

In-country stakeholders from 20+ sub Saharan African and South Asian countries benefited from a wide-range of system design expertise and new thinking and facilitated country-to-country system design knowledge exchange.

Summit attendees came from a wide range of organizations including governments (Ministries of Finance and Health, leaders of national supply chain organizations,central medical storesetc.), UN/UNICEF (global, regional and country), NGOs, supply chain analytics firms, private sector, donors, universities, etc.

The countries were able to assess their supply chain maturity level and lay out a preliminary implementation plan and timeline for the transition to the next maturity level. The UNICEF Regional and Country Office participants (working with government counterparts and partners) had a commitment across both Program and Supply teams to develop system design action plans and prioritize their implementation in 2019 and beyond. Plans for the next summit have been laid out.

For the Access-To-Medicines Research Team, participation to a summit like this is extremely important as it guides into and applies the research efforts to the directions with the largest need: the point of care delivery at the last mile, ultimately reaching the human being and realizing its intended health impact: ‘For every child – Pour chaque enfant’.

Nico Vandaele

Access-To-Medicines Research Center

As part of the Research Center for Operations Management