Hindustan Times: Overhaul the medicine supply chain
Nachiket Mor, director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s India Country Office, and Prashant Yadav, strategy leader for Supply Chain at the Gates Foundation

“Health systems around the world are benefiting from recent advances in supply chain technologies to deliver essential medicines to patients more effectively. … Many countries have … developed alternative supply chain models based on modern day supply chain science and technologies. South Africa, for example, is now implementing a model in which the government negotiates prices and select suppliers, but the suppliers deliver the medicines directly to health clinics or district hospitals. … China has now implemented a ‘two-invoice system’ whereby only two invoices can exist between a manufacturer and a clinic. Each manufacturer sells to a distributor and that distributor sells directly to hospitals and clinics, eliminating multi-tiered distribution. … As countries around the world, including India, attempt to ensure the timely availability of a full range of medicines to each and every one of their citizens, they would benefit greatly from studying some of these newer approaches that have been implemented, and developing appropriate solutions to their own challenges” (8/30).