The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is supporting Xinova’s efforts to brainstorm breakthrough approaches to improve timeliness, quality and visibility of data for the Malaria supply chain in Northern Nigeria.
As the most populous country in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), Nigeria suffers from the world’s largest malaria burden. Malaria is the leading cause of death in Nigeria, accounting for 18.3% of all deaths and 26.2% of the Under 5 mortality rate. To date, there are an estimated 54 million cases of malaria per year, leading to 82,000 deaths in Nigeria. Xinova is seeking four to five innovators to collaborate with Xinova and the foundation to identify new approaches to improve the ability to track malarial supplies, particularly Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDT) and anti-malarial medicines, throughout this low resource setting.
Effective supply chains are a critical condition of success in the fight against malaria – and these supply chains depend on data to make sure that the right products are available in the right places at an acceptable cost. Despite recent enhancements to data capture and reporting systems in Nigeria there is still an opportunity to improve the speed and accuracy of supply chain data flows. This challenge is made more acute by the disparate malaria product supply chains across thousands of government, private and NGO clinics, pharmacies and drug shops.
Proposed solutions should meet the following criteria:
Provide accurate and complete supply chain data across all levels of the supply chain, including the last mile, in as close to real time as possible
- Lowers the amount of work required by clinic workers
- Be cost effective and sustainable once implemented at scale
- Can be tested at low cost in a follow-on project
The ultimate goal of this effort is to deploy and test one or more concepts in the field, and measurably improve supply chain function. The top ideas will have the opportunity to be pitched for consideration of follow-on funding
Why this solution is valuable
- Prevent unnecessary deaths due to out-of-stock medicines
- Decrease clinician workloads
- Enable supply mobilization to meet critical demand
Deadline for Application: May 13, 2019
This opportunity comes from the efforts of Xinova’s R&D Consulting and Innovation team.
Are you up for the challenge?