Chemonics International seeks experienced professionals for the USAID-funded Global Health Supply Chain-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) project. GHSC-PSM Ethiopia will serve as the primary vehicle through which USAID will procure and furnish health commodities, provide technical assistance to improve the country’s management of the supply chain, and collaborate with key international stakeholders to support global and local health initiatives.

Section: Background, Scope of Work, Deliverables, Timeline, and Qualifications for Supervision and Data Collection on Evaluation of APTS Implementation Status in Ethiopia

Background

Most of the Ethiopian public suffers from diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhea, HIV, and malaria that could have easily been prevented or treated by ensuring continuous availability and proper use of essential medicines, supplies and reagents in transparent and sustainable way. However, inefficiencies involved in pharmaceutical supply chain and management at health facilities has resulted in multiple forms of irrational practices and wastages. Traceability of pharmaceutical transactions at health facilities is very poor and accountability has not been properly defined. The absence of tools and systems for tracking products and financial information has made auditing of transactions and services almost impossible. The lack of transparency and accountability in managing medicines and financial transactions has exposed the system to theft, pilferage, and misappropriations. The poor and vulnerable segment of the population is most affected by these inefficiencies as its access to medicines is limited to government health facilities through a fee waiver mechanism.

To solve these problems, the Ministry of Health and regional states have designed and implemented an innovative system called Auditable Pharmaceuticals Transactions and Services (APTS). APTS is enacted by regulation at federal and regional levels.

APTS is a data driven package of interventions designed to establish accountable, transparent, and responsible pharmacy practice. It enables health facilities to optimize utilization of medicines budget, improve access to medicines, and decrease wastages. APTS continuously monitors the number, mix & performance of pharmacy workforce. It also improves pharmacy premise design and workflow. Through improving recording and documentation, it generates reliable and consistent information for decision making. As a result, APTS improves overall quality of pharmacy services thereby increasing patient knowledge and satisfaction. Ultimately it contributes to better health outcomes.  APTS has five result areas: efficient budget utilization, transparent and accountable transactions, reliable information, effective workforce development and deployment, and improved customer satisfactions.

APTS has been one of the flagship programs at the ministry of health and regional health bureau levels. Accordingly, a lot of effort and resources have been utilized to realize APTS in health facilities. The implementation needs improvement of facilities, deploying and training of pharmacy professionals. Moreover, there is a huge demand for scaling up of APTS at all hospitals and health centers in all regional states.

This assessment aims to identify the status of APTS implementation, the gaps and challenges of implementation, the lessons learned and best practices in implementing APTS so far. More specifically, the assessment has the following objectives:

• To assess the number and utilization of pharmacy workforce before and after APTS
• To evaluate the outcomes and benefit of APTS implementation
• To explore the status, challenges, gaps of APTS implementation and its root causes
• To document lessons learned and best practices in implementation of APTS (MOH and RHBs)
• To identify best experience of implementation strategies/direction

The results obtained from this assessment will be used in designing a workable APTS scale up and maintenance strategy for the next 5 to 10 years.

Therefore, the GHSC-PSM Ethiopia Field Office would like to engage supervisors and data collectors for the successful execution of this assessment as per the following scope of work and requirements.

Scope of work

The scope of work for the data collectors will include but not limited to the following:

• Collects data from ministry of health, regional health bureaus, hospitals, and health centers as per the research objective and data collection tool
• Conduct interviews with patients, pharmacy professionals, health managers at different levels
• Conduct document review
• Transcribes data into electronic format based on the evaluation tool and format to be given by the organizers

The scope of work for the supervisors will include but not limited to the following:

• Supervise data collectors
• Provide technical support and guidance on data collection
• Data entry and data analysis
• Produce final report

Timeline and place of assignment

• Data collection will be conducted in two weeks (from August 24- September 9, 2020)- employment duration depends on
• Data collection supervision will be needed from August 24, to September 30, 2020
• The APTS evaluation will be conducted in all 10 regions and 2 city administrations.

Deliverables

MOH and GHSC-PSM Ethiopia project requires and expects mainly the followings deliverables:

• Deliver the data collected from all MOH, health facilities, and RHBs to GHSC-PSM and MOH
• Deliver data analysis results of APTS evaluation to GHSC-PSM and MOH
• Final report of all the assessment

Reporting

The consultants will report to GHSC-PSM Ethiopia Field Office, APTS and Pharmacy service case team coordinator for FMOH.

Summary of candidate(s) qualifications

Data collectors

• Bachelor’s degree in pharmacy and preferably master’s degree on pharmacy, public health, supply chain or related fields
• Experience in implementing APTS
• Experience in providing training on APTS
• Similar work experience on data collection
• Extensive experience in Ethiopia’s health supply chain and pharmacy service systems
• Good experience and relationship with stakeholders (MOH ad RHBs)
• Good communication skills
• Able to work effectively in a team
• Able to speak and write English and local language of the assigned data collection area is preferred.

Supervisors

• Master’s degree on pharmacy, public health, supply chain or related fields
• Experience in implementing APTS
• Experience in providing training on APTS
• Similar work experience on data collection
• Experience in supervision on research activities
• Experience in research on pharmaceutical supply chain and pharmacy
• Extensive experience in Ethiopia’s health supply chain and pharmacy service systems
• Good experience and relationship with stakeholders (MOH ad RHBs)
• Good communication skills
• Able to work effectively in a team
• Good management skills
• Able to speak and write English and local language of the assigned data collection area is preferred.