Dear IAPHL Members,
Happy Spring to those of you in the Northern Hemisphere and Happy Fall for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere!
In March, the secretariat was busy with preparing for and participating in two meetings of the Advisory Group. The main focus has been to start our development of a new three-year strategy for IAPHL. We have since held two meetings of a smaller group to address the key questions facing us: What is our mission, value provided and what activities should we be focused on for the next three years. Again, there has been grave concern about the lack of discussions going on our listserv. As we are a community of practice, it is critical that our members share their experiences and knowledge with each other.
I again taught a couple of classes for the graduate school of public health at George Washington University. I enjoyed being able to be in person this year to teach public health supply chain with a class with students who come from many countries in the world. There was a great discussion about logistics management information systems (LMIS) and the continuing installation of electronic LMISs. It would be interesting to have a good discussion on our platform about how different members are experiencing eLMISs.
As we do every month, we held two Chapter Leaders Meetings: one in English and one in French. We were happy to share with the chapter leaders that we will be continuing our chapter grant program until the end of the year.
We continue to serve on the committee to prepare for the People that Deliver Global Indaba. On 12 and 13 October 2022, People that Deliver (PtD), alongside IAPHL, Management Sciences for Health (MSH), Pharmaceutical Systems Africa and SAPICS – and with the support of the Global Fund – will host the PtD Global Indaba at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Lusaka, Zambia. The Global Indaba is a forum on human resources for health supply chain management and will centre on the theme: human resources (HR) for supply chain management (SCM): the missing link to maximizing supply chain performance. You can visit the Global Indaba website for more information.
At the very end of March, on the 31st, we put on a webinar: Outsourcing Transport of Health Commodities with panelists from Village Reach and the Global Fund. If you missed it, you can view the recording on our website. Again, this is a topic that would make a good discussion for our members. Have you experienced outsourcing of transport? Has this helped improve the public health supply chain in your country?
And finally, please do join the currently running moderated discussion: Gender and Social Inclusion in Health Supply Chains. It would be great to hear from members around the world about their experience with gender and social inclusion. Since we have around 30% of our members who are women, it would be great to hear about your personal experiences in this regard.
So, please stay safe. All the best.
Walter Proper, IAPHL Executive Director