Assuring Health Commodity Security in Resource-Poor Settings

Abstract

Health planners and program managers charged with the task of building or at least maintaining the health of populations within communities, districts, regions or countries have to find ways of assuring a steady (predictable) supply of health commodities for the production of needed healthcare and health when people suffer a random (unpredictable) shock to their health. To address this issue, this paper first makes a distinction between category-specific and aggregate commodity security. Aggregate health commodity security being the continuous interrupted supply of health commodities belonging to all therapeutic categories, however these categories are defined to match country’s demographic and epidemiological profiles. The paper then looks at what internal, external and transition capacities health planners and program managers need in order to assure aggregate commodity security. A capacity-oriented commodity security framework is presented to help health planners (in government, private or non-governmental circles) identify issues with or changes in aggregate commodity security within a given time period or across different time periods – and how these issues can possibly be managed or corrected.