Global Health Commodities Supply Chain in the Era of COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges, Impacts, and Prospects: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the most substantial health crisis in the 21st Century. This pandemic interrupted the supply of essential commodities for human beings. Among the essential commodities for human survival, disruption of the supply of essential health commodities has become a global concern.

Objective

The study aimed to systematically analyze published articles on the challenges, impacts, and prospects of the global health commodities’ supply chain in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

A standard searching strategy was conducted in seven research databases to retrieve pertinent articles. Finally, 459 articles were retrieved for further screening, and only 13 articles were selected for final synthesis.

Results

Almost 38.5% of the studies targeted the supply chain of health commodities used to treat HIV, TB, and malaria. Lockdown policies, travel restrictions, lack of transportation, low manufacturing capacity, and rising costs were the significant challenges indicated for the supply interruption of essential health commodities and COVID-19 vaccines. Findings indicated that the supply interruption of essential health commodities leads to a devastating impact on global health.

Conclusion

Global medicine shortages due to the pandemic crisis can have a devastatingly harmful impact on patient outcomes and might result in a devastatingly long-lasting effect on the health of the world community. Supply-related challenges of the COVID-19 vaccine affect countries’ ambitions for achieving herd immunity quickly. Monitoring the pandemic’s effect on the health commodities’ supply system and designing a short-term and long-term resilient health supply chain system that can cope with current and future health catastrophes is pivotal.

Keywords:

• global supply chain
• health commodities
• health product
• pharmaceuticals
• challenges
• opportunities
• prospects
• COVID-19
• COVID-19 vaccine

Acknowledgment

We extend our appreciation to the Department of Pharmaceutics and Social Pharmacy at Addis Ababa University. The study was supported by the Kühne Foundation. We also appreciate Dr. Andre Kreie and Dr. Daniel Zapata for their wonderful facilitation effort.

This manuscript was presented at the Health and Humanitarian Logistics 2021 (HHL2021) Virtual Conference.

Author Contributions

All authors contributed significantly to the conception, design of the study, data extraction, analysis, and interpretation. They were involved in either drafting the manuscript, revising it, or providing editorial support. Additionally, all authors critically reviewed the article, granted final approval of the version to be published, selected the journal for submission, and consented to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure

All authors have declared that they have no competing interests in this work.

Additional information

Funding

This study is part of the Logistics Education in Emerging and Developing Countries (LEED) program supported with Kühne Foundation.