Weak supply chains for personal protective equipment (PPE) needed in the battle against the coronavirus 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic are causing prolonged lockdowns and the death of thousands of health-care workers, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
In an Asian Development Blog, ADB Principal Knowledge Sharing and Services Specialist Susann Roth and Principal Procurement Specialist Jesper Pedersen said these are also causing the proliferation of overpriced but substandard PPEs.
Roth and Pedersen said this is the reason countries need to work together. By banding together, countries would be able to prevent these supply chains from failing, especially at this time.
“To respond to the need for better global coordination, the United Nations set up the UN Covid-19 Supply Chain Task Force in April 2020, led by the World Health Organization with the support from the greater UN system,” Roth and Pedersen said.
“The international community of development partners needs to support this newly set up task force and coordinate supply demand at the country, regional and global level,” they added.
Roth and Pedersen said years before Covid-19 came into existence, many health security experts have already predicted the failure of the PPE market in case of a pandemic.
They urged governments and health facilities to build stockpiles and develop “intelligent surge capacities” to deploy supplies and equipment amid a crisis.
Despite these warnings, Roth and Pedersen said, countries failed to create their pandemic plans and yield their stockpiles. This has led to depleted stockpiles, 4 percent to six month backlogs in supply, and 50 percent to as much as 100 percent increase in prices.
Roth and Pedersen said this leads to frontliners being unprotected and higher fatality rates. Last week, the Philippines’s Department of Health (DOH) said a total of 1,245 health-care workers have been infected with Covid-19.
Of this number, 27 health-care workers have died due to Covid-19. Majority or 21 of these workers are doctors and six are nurses.
The DOH said of the total number of health-care workers infected by Covid-19, around 464 are doctors, 471 Arta nurses, 69 are nursing assistants, 41 are medical technologists, 25 are radiologic technologists, and 10 are midwives.
“In many developing countries, health workers are getting infected and belong to those getting severely sick or even dying,” Roth and Pedersen said.
“If we can’t protect our health work force and ensure infection prevention and control in our health facilities, we fail our populations and patients,” they added.
Roth and Pedersen said giving the UN Covid-19 Supply Chain Task Force a chance could improve the situation for health- care workers and populations in general.
The task force will create a new online supply chain coordination portal to help aggregate demand and supply data to inform procurement and logistics arrangements.
The platform will allow countries and development partners to assess their needs and procure supplies. What is important in this platform, Roth and Pedersen said, is the commitment to transparency and data sharing.
“It’s time for UN agencies and multilateral development banks to come together and invest in the public goods of pandemic supply chain management and market shaping,” they said.
Image credits: AP/Aaron Favila
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