COVID-19 disruptions impacted all global supply chains, including those providing public health commodities. Many of the health commodities procured by GHSC-PSM faced supplier-level shocks, and COVID-19 caused unprecedented stress on global, regional, and in-country logistics, including significant delays, backups at ports and significant increases in shipping costs. GHSC-PSM mitigated upstream risks — by identifying alternate sources of supply, fulfillment, and delivery mechanisms — and downstream risks — through collaboration with key stakeholders and tools to enhance data visibility for better decision-making.
Despite the myriad disruptions and unprecedented challenges, the project met its programmatic commitments, delivering products on time, averting stockouts, and achieving an average of more than 70 percent on-time delivery from March 2020 to March 2021, the pandemic’s first year.
This new technical brief describes how the GHSC-PSM helped provide key COVID-19 commodities while pivoting to ensure that U.S. government-supported health programs for HIV/AIDS, malaria, family planning/reproductive health, and maternal and child health continue uninterrupted.
