When coronavirus first made its way to Bangladesh, the government initially struggled to convince its mass population to maintain the health and safety rules needed to keep the rogue pathogen at bay.
But gradually, people came around and the government succeeded in bringing the situation under control.
Now, the country is facing a new challenge in the form of successful sourcing and rollout of the Covid-19 vaccination programme.
As per the contract with the Serum Institute of India that is producing the Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, Bangladesh will get enough doses to inoculate 15 million people, which is 9.25 per cent of the population.
Apart from this, Bangladesh also signed a contract with the World Health Organisation’s Covax facility to receive millions of doses.
So far, very few countries in the world have received Covid-19 vaccine, and Bangladesh is one of the fortunate few.
The government is planning to commence a large-scale vaccine rollout programme shortly, and an end-to-end efficient supply chain can make the rollout a successful one.
Procurement strategic sourcing is an approach of supply chain management that formalises the way information is gathered and used so that a country can leverage its consolidated purchasing power to find the best values related to the Covid-19 vaccine.
It can serve as a roadmap for procuring vaccines ahead of time, allowing to find the best price instead of waiting until there is an immediate need.
Strategic sourcing can also be the bedrock for deep change within a supply chain that leads to better financial gains too and is also an effective way of working towards better needs.
By planning with a strategic sourcing setup, it can not only get the best price but also can ensure that they purchase the exact vaccine from the right manufacturers that meet their quality and delivery requirements.
It will also ensure several benefits, especially lower unit prices for high-volume purchases, and it can help to reduce the number of risks that we may face along with ensuring excellence through long-term plans and stepping away from the day-to-day grind.
The list of brands that have reached phase III and beyond are Oxford, Pfizer, Moderna, Bharat Biotech, Sinopharm, Sinovac, Gamaleya, Novavax, Johnson & Johnson, Vector Institute, CanSino Biologics and Murdoch.
These can be considered for sourcing directly as it will improve the chances of getting the required number of Covid-19 vaccines at the lowest cost and at the right time.
Negotiating with vaccine-producing organisations is a large part of this vaccine procurement game: the global demand is much higher than the supply and there is an element of national interest at play, too.
To ensure successful negations with the producers, it is important to set the objectives beforehand.
Several factors should be considered when defining the objectives of negotiation and these may include but are not limited to delivery lead time, cost, value for money, payment conditions, packaging, logistics, the formation of a negotiation team consisting of government representatives, industry experts.
Local or foreign professional negotiators can be involved or hired to ensure the highest level of national interest.
As per DHL, approximately 10 billion vaccine doses would need to be delivered to all corners of the world within the next two years.
The Bangladesh government has devised a plan to vaccinate about 140 million people and for that, we will require 0.28 billion doses.
Vaccines must be stored properly from the time they are manufactured until they are administered.
Proper maintenance of vaccines during transport is known as the cold chain.
A proper cold chain is a temperature-controlled supply chain that includes all equipment and procedures used in the transport and storage and handling of vaccines from the time of manufacture to the administration of the vaccine.
From the producer’s end to ensuring supply at the endpoint, there are many supply chain challenges.
The logistics include temperature-controlled air transportation, cold storage warehouse facilities and inland transportation of vaccine from cold storage warehouse to vaccine point.
Currently, large parts of Africa, South America and Asia could not be readily supplied with vaccines on a large scale due to lack of cold chain logistics capacity suitable for life science products.
It is going to take extraordinary measures to take the jabs to these places, where some two-thirds of the world’s population live.
It is recommended that at the time of signing procurement contracts with the vaccine-producing companies, the air transportation costs are taken into account.
As far as we know, our government has so far decided to store the vaccine only in Dhaka.
To reduce the risks and costs, a feasibility study can be taken regarding setting up a vaccine warehouse in multiple places around the country instead of only in the capital.
Vaccine warehouse facilities can be set up in such a way that in future those places can be used for multiple purposes.
A critical element for the success of the immunisation drive would be the uninterrupted supply of reliable electricity at the vaccine cold chain storage points and session sites.
Any kind of power cuts can harm the entire immunisation drive.
Therefore, the government should ensure uninterrupted availability of continuous and reliable power supply at all the vaccine cold chain storage points and session sites.
Alternative power supplies must be kept on standby — and at least two tiers — to deal with any contingencies.
As per the industry expert opinions, one of the key challenges will be to efficiently deliver the vaccines to the health centres across the country.
A massive cold chain logistics transport facility is a must for sending the vaccines to the remote parts of the country efficiently.
Other than the sufficient number of vehicles, trained drivers are also needed for ensuring the safe transportation of vaccines.
An adequate supply of packing materials (e.g.; coolers, cold packs, barriers) to accommodate the facility’s vaccine supply should be available at required places.
The government has also devised a plan to vaccinate about 140 million people, or 80 per cent of the population, against SARS-CoV-2, the dominant stream of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
This might be the first that any of us are dealing with a global pandemic but the successful rollout of the immunisation programme is not the maiden case for us.
After the strong commitment Bangladesh made to the United Nations back in the mid 1980s, some real initiatives were taken to strengthen the expanded programme of immunisation (EPI).
Through the programme, significant success was made in the vaccination against six childhood diseases: polio, measles, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria and tuberculosis.
Mohammad Rashedul Alam is the head of supply chain and procurement at bKash
