Taking Stock and Battling Malaria in Northwest Nigeria

Gloria Samuel is a lifeline in her community. She is the officer-in-charge of Karyo Dispensary, the only medicines dispensary serving 6,400 people in a remote, hard-to-reach area of Kebbi state in northwest Nigeria.

Gloria usually sees 250 patients a day, dispensing medicines for malaria, prenatal care, routine immunizations, and minor injuries. Throughout the long days she conducts malaria tests and dispenses malaria treatments, while also making sure there are always enough medicines in stock for her sick patients.

Stocking the dispensary, which is three miles from the nearest town and six miles from the nearest health center, is not a straightforward job. Access is by a dirt road that is slippery and cannot be traversed by most vehicles, especially during the rainy season when malaria medicines are in high demand. The most common way that the medicines reach Gloria is by animal transport.

Gloria takes the potential delivery delays and long lead times into account when ordering medical supplies. To order malaria medicines, she conducts an inventory of malaria commodities in the dispensary and submits reports to the Kebbi State Malaria Elimination Program. Luckily, Gloria has a logistics system that helps her manage supplies throughout her busy days so she can make sure she does not run out of the medicines she needs to keep her community healthy.

Nigeria accounts for more than a quarter of the world’s malaria cases, and Kebbi State has some of the highest malaria prevalence in the country, with 52 percent of children under age 5 testing positive for malaria in a 2018 national survey. Making sure people in hard-to-reach communities have easy and affordable access to malaria tests and medicines is crucial for saving lives, particularly given the difficulty of reaching a hospital in time if a malaria case becomes severe.

Gloria is among the more than 5,000 health officials in Nigeria trained by the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) to use a malaria products logistic system to keep track of malaria test and medicine consumption and produce stock reports for their facilities. With this information, the healthcare workers can easily keep track of their stocks and submit the reports to the Kebbi State Malaria Elimination Program to ensure timely resupply.

PMI supports the malaria program in eleven states in Nigeria. Since July 2016, the project has helped the Government of Nigeria efficiently manage its health supply chain and coordinate last-mile delivery of malaria commodities through the State Logistics Management Coordination Units of the Ministry of Health.

PMI procures and delivers rapid diagnostic test kits for malaria, artemisinin-based combination therapies, insecticide-treated bed nets to protect families from malaria-carrying mosquitoes at night, and other malaria commodities to over 5,000 health facilities across the country.

It means the world to Gloria that she is able to provide the medicines that her patients need. She no longer has to refer patients to other facilities because she has run out of supplies. Knowing how to use the malaria logistics system means that she is able to regularly assess her medicine stocks and keep on top of reordering. “I am happy that I never have to turn back clients diagnosed with malaria,” says Gloria. “Thanks to PMI for always resupplying my facility with the needed malaria commodities, I am fulfilled as a health worker.”

Cover photo: Malaria medicines being transported with cattle to Karyo Dispensary. Photo credit: Global Health Supply Chain Program-Procurement and Supply Management, Nigeria