HHSCM Alumni Spotlight

At the time I requested for scholarship to join the HHSCM program at Georgia Tech, I had been working for the EPI (Expanded Program of Immunization) as a vaccine supply chain officer. Being a vaccine supply chain officer at the central level, planning was my area of work. Although, I have been working with Immunization programs for 5 years and I have been leading planning activities for immunization supply chain management, where annual forecasting for routine immunization have been part of my assignment, I was interested in learning and getting skilled in Humanitarian Health Supply Chain Management considering emergencies of disease outbreaks in our region that have risen. I knew I would not feel confident without a professional course to make my career complete.

As of July 2020, I joined UNICEF country office where I am providing support to the EPI program on the supply and cold chain management area. I am working closely with EPI, where all activities related to supply chain of vaccines, vaccine devices and cold chain equipment are performed under our supervision. It is during this period of COVID-19 that this field is needed more than never. As the program is planning to receive vaccines for the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, I am part of the team planning for that and the skills I gained from the course were used during the planning processes to identify gaps and find solutions.

I am therefore grateful for the scholarship I gained from the UPS; without it I wouldn’t attend the course while skills from the course were needed to improve my career so as to perform better. I liked the way the course was performed although it was not a face-to-face interaction as planned before, but virtual, it was perfect. All the material was provided, and lecturers were just perfect. We learned about new tools being used in planning and decision making in supply chain management. These tools will be helpful when needed to guide decision making during the critical moments.

(Abov) Evodie during the National Immunization Logistics Working Group workshop, for which she is a member. The group has been making a work plan for the year 2021. During this workshop emergency plans made are related to COVID-19 vaccination campaign and plans for the resource allocation related to supply chain and cold chain logistic. Evodie remarks that “the (Vensim) tool to estimate needs taught during the course has been useful in this planning session”.