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Background: Essential medicines are those drugs that satisfy the priority healthcare needs
of the population. In Tanzania the supply chain of essential health commodities largely depends on imported finished products and Raw materials. As a result of the surge in the
COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the inevitable lockdown of the economy across affected
countries, there has been a noticeable decrease in production and exportation of raw
materials as well as finished health products across different countries. So far it is not
known how the pandemic has affected the supply chain of essential health commodities in
Tanzania.
Objective: To assess the impact of Covid-19 on the supply chain of essential health
commodities in Tanzania.
Methodology: This retrospective register-based study was conducted at TMDA, to asses
price changes before and during COVID-19. Cross sectional study was conducted at
selected retail pharmacies to assess for the availability, price changes and customer’s
purchasing pattern of essential health commodities.
Qualitative interview of key informants from pharmaceutical industries and private
importers of health commodities was done using open ended questions.
The longitudinal data and quantitative interview data analysis were performed for T- Test
using SPSS version 20 and Microsoft Excel®, Microsoft Corporation 2019 respectively.
The recorded interviews were analyzed for themes (thematic analysis) of the impacts of
COVID 19 on the supply chain of essential commodities in Tanzania.
Results: Quantitative interview consisted of two hundred forty-two participants, among
those 89.3% agreed that COVID-19 reduced the availability of health commodities.
Different ways through which the pandemic reduced the availability included increase in
demand, increase in price as well as reduced production of health commodities. Fifty one
percent (51%) of participants disagreed that COVID-19 reduced pharmacy business while
61% said that customers’ ability to purchase health commodities during the pandemic was
not affected (not reduced). Products that were in high demand included medicines like
Azithromycin, Vitamin C, Multivitamin, Dexamethasone, Ivermectin, Aspirin and
Heparin.
Qualitative results from pharmaceutical importers showed reduced production of health
commodities and increased demand of some health commodities reduced their availability
Transportation factors, port clearance issues and withholding stocks of health commodities
also were found to increase the price of imported health commodities. While shortage of
workforce in manufacturing plants, customs factors and scarcity of raw materials increased
the lead time of imported health commodities and pharmaceutical raw materials.
Conclusion: Findings of this study show that COVID-19 impacted the supply of essential
health commodities by reducing availability, increasing price and lead time of imported
health commodities and pharmaceutical raw materials, further the study found changes in
purchasing pattern of essential health commodities where for some commodities demand
was increased dramatically while their supply decreased. |
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