Supporting the development of supply chain and drug safety technical assistance packages in the Philippines

In the Philippines, public health facilities continue to experience stock shortages and other supply chain-related bottlenecks hampering the delivery of quality health services. Adverse events of new drugs in public health programs also need to be more systematically and regularly reported. To help address these challenges, USAID MTaPS engaged the Department of Health (DOH) and local government units (LGUs) to map out their desired procurement, supply management, and drug safety systems.

On February 17, 2021, the MTaPS program conducted a virtual workshop with 140 DOH and LGU regional office representatives to assess the status of their supply chain and drug safety systems and analyze their capacities and the gaps in governance, human resources, information systems, service delivery, and financial and other resources. MTaPS also presented the concept of developing local technical assistance providers that LGUs can tap to help improve their systems, a mechanism to sustain the technical assistance providers following the end of the MTaPS program.

The workshop results will help inform DOH’s supply chain and drug safety technical assistance package for LGUs. Developing the sustained capacity of the DOH and LGUs to effectively operate and manage their supply chain and drug safety systems will improve health services and ensure patient safety.