Poster 13

Improving the availability of health commodities through supportive supervision: A case study from Vihiga County, Kenya (77)

Poor human resource capacity and service delivery limit access to essential health technologies— including medicines—in low- and middle-income countries. The lack of adequate supportive supervision contributes to this suboptimal performance. By identifying service delivery gaps and providing onsite mentoring to health workers, supportive supervision not only builds the capacity of health workers but also affords program managers the information needed to address systemic challenges. In contrast to the traditional inspective approach to supervision—which tends to be punitive—supportive supervision focuses on joint problem solving, mentoring and provision of required resources. Supportive supervision ultimately improves healthcare workers’ performance, quality of service delivery and facilitates uninterrupted access to medicines and other health technologies, thereby improving population health. Based on the above premise, the Health Products and Technologies Unit (HPTU) of the Department of Health, Vihiga County, Kenya—established in June 2021 with support from USAID Global Health Supply Chain Program-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) project—embarked on an initiative to strengthen supportive supervision as part of the county’s overall goal of improving access to health products and technologies (HPTs), including medicines. Prior to the introduction of this initiative in January 2020, the county had limited visibility into the health facility’s performance resulting in poor decision-making by program managers. A baseline assessment by the county supportive supervision team in 69 public health facilities revealed shortage of health products and unexplained losses resulting in poor health service delivery. Specifically, the mean scores of health facilities on key indicators of the supply chain performance were low and as follows: resolution of previous action points 46.75%; storage of health products 68.72%; inventory management 42.67%; availability and use of commodity data MIS tools 74.40%; verification of commodity data 65.56%; availability of guidelines and job aids for commodity management 36.65%; accountability of HPTs 58.58%; composite (final) score 56.19%.

Dr Jerusa Oluhano¹, Collins Mudogo¹, Mercy Amadi²

¹JSI County Government of Vihiga (Kenya Dept of Health), ²USAID Global Health Supply Chain Program – Afya Ugavi