This article describes how NMSF, as a semi-autonomous pharmaceuticals supply agency, has been successful in partnering with UNICEF and the People that Deliver (PtD) Initiative in developing a comprehensive strategy for the development and retention of its workforce. Success is attributed to strong leadership with a focus on continual improvement of all aspects of the organization.

PtD pursued the development of case studies that document how public and private sector organizations successfully manage the human capital in their supply chains. This report includes the first two of these case studies for Imperial Health Sciences and Central Medical Supplies Public Corporation (Sudan). PtD intends to continue developing case studies to offer the broader community examples of human capital management that they can adopt to improve supply chain execution.

This survey is part of a series of the eight country surveys realized in the context of the People that Deliver Initiative. The joint methodology used for these surveys is based on the “assessment guide for capacity in public health supply chain management” elaborated and validated by Initiative members in 2011, in accordance with the USAID model.

En s’appuyant sur l’expertise de ses spécialistes de la chaîne d’approvisionnement et des ressources humaines pour la santé, People that Deliver a proposé une série d’activités destinées à évaluer et à résoudre de manière globale les difficultés de la chaîne d’approvisionnement en matière de ressources humaines.

The purpose of the Supply Chain Performance Improvement Program (SCPI) was to build capacity in Central Medical Store (CMS) staff in ISO-accredited warehousing best practices through a modular, adaptable three-phased approach. The need for local, country-specific training programs is in high demand. In response to increasing requests, including a request from the Namibia Ministry of Health and Social Services (MOHSS), for a more country-specific, less resource intensive warehouse operations management (WOM) course, Supply Chain Management System (SCMS) staff designed the SCPI program. For years, the traditional capacity building approach in WOM was offsite, in-service training for central and regional medical store staff around the world. Staff would leave their posts for weeks at a time, usually with travel fees and course tuition funded by donor agencies. When staff returned to their posts, it was difficult to apply what they had learned in the state-of-the-art warehouse training facilities to their own unique warehouse environments.

The presentation provides an overview of Health System and Supply Chain in Namibia, key findings of the human resources for supply chain management assessment and key HR related findings of a SWOT analysis of the central medical store.

The HR4SCM diagnostic tool has been developed by the PtD and the GHSC-PSM project. The tool is based on PtD's building human resources for supply chain management and its origins lie in a considerable body of theoretical and applied development in the evaluation field.

The diagnostic tool can identify and address, in broad terms, the strengths and weaknesses of key aspects of the supply chain workforce.

The PtD-Namibia collaboration proposed a multifaceted, coordinated response that built on previous assessments and initiatives for the SCM workforce. PtD-Namibia sought to strengthen all five of the PtD human resources building blocks—that is, stakeholder engagement, optimized policies and plans, workforce development, improved retention and performance, and professionalized SCM workforce - through five integrated and interrelated activities over a period of 18 months.

Namibia is faced with one of the most severe health workforce shortages in the world, including a shortage of supply chain personnel to manage the key institutions of the public health supply chain, the Central Medical Store (CMS) and Regional Medical Store (RMS). As Namibia is a focus country for People that Deliver (PtD), a global initiative focused on raising awareness of human resource (HR) challenges for supply chain management (SCM), the Namibian Ministry of Health and Social Services (MOHSS) requested the Initiative’s assistance in tackling its supply chain human resource challenges.