How Covid-19 team set up foolproof supply system

Protective equipment from private donors is being delivered to public hospitals across the country through a system ordinarily used to transport high-value goods, the Sunday Nation has learnt.

Since June, personal protective equipment (PPEs) sourced by private individuals and businesses have been going to 68 hospitals countrywide using a private courier service with a digitised system that tracks movement of items from the source to the destination.

And when the deliveries reach a particular hospital, a committee of seven has to formally receive the equipment. That committee is also charged with accounting for the usage of the PPEs.

The packages typically consist of disposable gowns, surgical masks, N95 masks, protective goggles, nitrile gloves, face shields, head covers, disposable scrubs, shoe covers and gumboots.

With the documented inefficiencies and theft loopholes in the Kenya Medical Supplies Agency (Kemsa) distribution systems, the trackable method offers a study in accountable delivery of medical equipment.

The Sunday Nation understands that the Kemsa-independent system was championed by Equity Bank CEO James Mwangi, the largest individual donor to the national Covid-19 response kitty so far, and was inspired by the means the bank uses to move cash and other items across its branches and its procurement systems.

Public hospitals

“The parallel effort delivered the PPEs at a time when public hospitals were gasping for help, waiting for PPEs from the government, which mostly were never delivered because of bureaucracy in the procurement systems,” a county medical services officer told the Sunday Nation.

Fargo Courier, an Equity Bank transportation partner, is in charge of shipment. Also, each of the seven-member committees that receive goods at hospitals include a representative of the bank.

“We believe that the system gives the Covid-19 board a transparent mechanism of ensuring proper end-to-end management of PPE provision to our healthcare workers,” Mr Mwangi said in an interview.

He added: “The distribution system is fully digitised from their (Wells Fargo) central warehouse and has a sophisticated tracking system that ensures last-mile receipt by the respective hospital liaison committee. The liaison committees verify the consignment, receive and take responsibility for the proper usage by the healthcare workers.”

The Covid-19 board he was referring to is the team of 12 chaired by EABL executive director Jane Karuku that was instituted by President Uhuru Kenyatta in April to coordinate donations from individuals and corporates towards combating the coronavirus pandemic.

Corporate donor

Mr Mwangi is among the 12 and chairs the board’s health committee. Also sitting in the board is Mr Michael Joseph (Safaricom), Mr Wachira Waruru (Royal Media Services), Mr Joshua Oigara (KCB), Dr Narendra Raval (Devki), Mr Jeremy Awori (Absa Bank), Mr Mohammed Hersi (Kenya Tourism Federation), and Ms Phyllis Wakiaga (Kenya Association of Manufacturers).

The board also includes Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i, Council of Governors chairman Wycliffe Oparanya and Mr Kennedy Kihara, a principal administrative secretary in the Office of the President.

As per the board’s website, the biggest corporate donor among the 75 that have contributed so far is Equity Bank and the family of Mr Mwangi, which donated Sh1.1 billion to the cause. The least contributed by a corporate is Sh17,000.

On the individual contributors’ front, the amounts donated by the 46 donors so far range from Sh1 million to Sh5.

During last Monday’s national Covid-19 conference at the KICC,   Mrs Karuku said Sh2.6 billion that the board has received in cash donations, Sh1.5 billion has been allocated for PPEs.

“For 18 months we are going to provide PPEs. If we don’t need PPEs any longer, we can divert that money,” she said.

When Mrs Karuku’s board began its operations from April 2, there was hardly a system they could use to source and distribute equipment to key county hospitals. And so they had to cover a lot of ground.

“We brought experts to support us with health. So, in the health committee which is led by Dr James Mwangi, we adopted Prof (Isaac) Macharia, the great ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialist, and a group from the medical doctors’ union, the Nursing Council and clinical officers, because we didn’t know what was going on. This was tough,” Mrs Karuku said on Monday.

Face mask

The team later decided that all PPEs would be sourced locally and Mr Mwangi told the Sunday Nation that within a few months, a supply chain had been established.

He noted that in the early days, a face mask had an asking price of Sh150. The team then negotiated downwards to Sh30.

“Now that it is being manufactured here by our people, we are only buying it for Sh8,” he said.

The PPE clothing, he noted, had an initial asking price of Sh9,000, which went down to Sh850 due to local manufacture.

“We started influencing and shaping the global economy; turning an import supply chain to an export supply chain,” said Mr Mwangi.

The first consignment of locally manufactured PPEs to be sent out to public hospitals by the board was flagged off on June 24. It entailed equipment worth Sh237.2 million; including 100,250 disposable gowns, 550,000 surgical masks, 54,000 N95 respirator masks, 5,400 protective goggles, among other items.

The PPE transportation mechanism is not the only accountability-based system. Accountancy firms PwC Kenya, Deloitte Kenya, KPMG and Ernst and Young Kenya are offering free assurance services.

“We said that anybody who was going to help us with the work was going to do it for free,” said Mrs Karuku at the Monday conference. “We didn’t even take a cup of tea,” she added.

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