Zambia's Medical Stores Limited (MSL), a government owned entity, is responsible for supplying medical commodities to hospitals and health centres throughout the country. It has the vitally important role of delivering health services and improving the lives of the Zambia's 10 million population. Changes to the way health care is managed in Zambia, along with an increase in the need to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria, have increased the complexity and volume of MSL's work. A new way of doing things was called for.
Crown Agents is currently turning MSL into an effective, flexible, efficient and demand-led organisation. When we began managing the operation in 2004, our team of four consultants found a physical infrastructure sorely in need of investment, inflexible, expensive distribution arrangements, and a dispirited workforce. All of this was costing the Zambian people a lot of money for an inadequate service.
Since then we have brought spending under control, ensured that staff are paid on time, set up a pension scheme, abolished theft within the system and created a new flexible ordering and distribution system that allows health centres to know precisely when stocks will arrive. Using donor funds negotiated by our consultants the warehouse is being modernised, with professional storage and handling equipment for cost-efficient and responsive storage. On a day-to-day basis we are building the capacity of MSL's managers, encouraging, coaching and supporting them to become a confident and empowered team.
All of this is pulled together by strategic and operational business plans to take MSL and health supply for Zambia into the future. With the changes Crown Agents has put in place Zambians can be confident that more of their money will be spent on drugs and less on administration.