Country: Uganda
City: Kampala
Type: Volunteer, International – Full Time, under 6
months (ineligible for benefits)
Business Unit: Country Programs - Country Teams
Founded in 2002 by President William J. Clinton, the Clinton
Health Access Initiative (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to
strengthening integrated health systems around the world and expanding access
to care and treatment for HIV/AIDS, malaria and other illnesses. Based on the
premise that business oriented strategy can facilitate solutions to global
health challenges, CHAI acts as a catalyst to mobilize new resources and
optimize the impact of these resources to save lives, via improved organization
of commodity markets and more effective local management. By working in
association with governments and other NGO partners, CHAI is focused on large
scale impact and, to date, CHAI has secured lower pricing agreements for
treatment options in more than 70 countries. In addition, CHAI's teams are
working side-by-side with over 30 governments to tackle many of the largest
barriers to effective treatment and care.
In Uganda the private sector serves the majority (50-70%) of
disease cases for which treatment can be secured over-the-counter. Such
diseases include malaria and diarrhea, two of the three leading causes of
under-five mortality. In the majority of cases, private sector service delivery
is retail, rather than facility-based; and is often provided by small and
poorly-qualified drug shops. These get their supply, and the majority of their
information, from a highly fragmented wholesale-based marketplace, which is in
turn supplied by a relatively small number (~10) of pharmaceutical first-line
distributors (1LDs).
The Private Sector Team works to improve access to informed
healthcare provision and high quality medicines through the private sector. On
the supply-side, we do this by working at all levels of the supply chain to
improve the availability and affordability of appropriate drugs. Essentially,
this amounts to the alignment of improved health outcomes with private sector
profitability: no easy task, but one that can be achieved by working with
private sector stakeholders to identify opportunities to increase revenue or
streamline costs, and translate this into patient impact. For example, we have
been instrumental in reducing the price of diarrhea treatment by over 50%,
while allowing the 1LDs involved to maintain their product-line profitability
through increased volumes. This sort of development work is highly innovative,
and demands an extremely entrepreneurial approach and mindset.
The responsibility of this role is to identify and implement
organization-wide operational improvements that can be leveraged to secure
improved patient impact. If successful, this approach could be scaled to
multiple 1LDs, leading to widespread improvement of Uganda’s private
healthcare. Working with CHAI in the private sector team will expose the
intern to a leading global development organization, and allow them to use
their business skills to directly drive life-saving change and gain experience
in the pharmaceutical sector – one of Africa’s emerging area of investment.
Responsibilities:
- Interview
import, warehouse, sales and marketing division leaders (at selected
1LD) to establish and prioritize opportunities for cost reduction, sales
improvement, or efficiency optimization that (1) fall in line with 1LD’s
business development plans, and (2) can be translated into patient impact
through increased quality assurance or product affordability
- Conduct
analysis of relevant product import/inventory/distribution/sales data to
assess potential impact and fine-tune scope of optimization opportunity
- Work
with relevant teams at the 1LD to develop and implement strategy to
address high-priority optimization opportunities, possibly including
development of tools and systems to:
- Increase
portfolio of high-quality, low-cost products
- Improve
coordination of import supply chain
- Improve
quality and management of distribution
- Improve
sales performance to specified market segments
- Broaden
1LD’s wholesale and/or retail presence
- Ensure
that 1LD has systems in place to monitor incoming data and facilitate
appropriate usage
- Establish
a clear structure to ensure that cost/efficiency savings resulting from
the project are translated into long-term patient impact
- Create
a toolkit illustrating market-wide areas for focus & improvement that
CHAI can use to improve the operations of other 1LDs
Qualifications:
- Very
strong business consulting skills (ideally a strategy consultant
externship)
- Excellent
strategic thinking
- Strong
analytical skills
- Specific
applicable skills/experience, e.g. supply chain management skills, sales
management, pharmaceutical markets
- Strong
self-management and excellent track-record of completing projects to a
timeframe
- Private
sector background
Experience:
Bachelor's degree or equivalent; or 3 years work experience plus Secondary School or equivalent; or equivalent total work experience
