Dear IAPHL Members,
I am glad to report that we continue to grow in membership. Our country chapters have been looking at ways to grow the local chapter membership as well. Certainly, Covid-19 has provided some challenges for many chapters as they move to register locally, if needed, and to encourage local discussions of health supply chain. I am sure the membership has noted recently that the Liberia chapter has begun to get itself organized again.
For September, we conducted a webinar on a supply-planning tool developed by IAPHL and JSI that links to the WHO forecasting tool. As with all of our webinars, if you were unable to attend, you can find the recordings on the website. In addition, special note that both our Ghana chapter and our India chapter conducted their own webinars this month. I was able to participate as a panelist for the India Chapter one and was able to be a listener for the Ghana webinar. Both chapters made recordings of their respective webinars.
As you may have seen, we have started our Country Chapter Leadership Spotlight series. We have now posted the first two interviews of Jacob Kuutuome, Ghana, and Chuka Shiezie, Nigeria. These are short interviews so that we all may learn about our different chapter leaders and about their country chapters. We will be posting a new spotlight interview every two weeks.
Most recently, I served as one of the moderators for the three days of sessions for the Health and Humanitarian Logistics Conference. I know that many IAPHL members joined the conference virtually. One of the interesting statements from the plenary pertained to the changing role of the logistician. In discussing how the government, private, and civil society sectors must come together to address supply chain needs, logisticians are becoming relationship and knowledge brokers.
As always, we continue to talk to our donors and potential sponsors. We want to thank i+Solutions for their renewal of sponsorship.
At the international level, we still hope to see more of our members providing submissions to the listserv: key issues that you may be facing are most likely key issues for others around the world. As we approve new members, we often read that a person is joining to share ideas and knowledge; so please do share. As a community of practice, one of our best ways to learn and improve our skills, is to have members share their ideas and experiences in health supply chain.