Medicines dispatched to Zimbabwe’s public hospitals and clinics will soon be digitally tracked from warehouse to delivery point as the National Pharmaceutical Company (NatPharm) moves to close loopholes that have allowed drugs to go missing from the public health supply chain.
The electronic tracking system, now being tested ahead of a pilot programme, will record the movement of medicine consignments and flag shortages, delays and deliveries that stray from planned routes.
NatPharm managing director Newman Madzikwa said the system was introduced to address weaknesses in the paper-based system, which made it difficult to determine in real time whether medicines dispatched from warehouses reached their intended facilities in full.
“Paper-based dispatch and receipting process had real structural weaknesses: manual goods-received vouchers that take time to reconcile, no batch-level traceability once a consignment leaves our depot, and no reliable way to confirm in real time that what we dispatched arrived, in full, at the correct facility,” he said.
Madzikwa said the electronic system would provide NatPharm and health authorities with a verifiable record of medicine movement and help address concerns over the diversion of medicines from public institutions for private resale.
Under the new system, medicines will be electronically recorded when they arrive from suppliers, with quantities and batch numbers checked against purchase orders.
Orders destined for public health facilities will also be scanned and verified before being dispatched. Each consignment will receive a unique barcode and digital manifest linked to the vehicle, driver and destination facility.
At the receiving facility, pharmacists or dispensary staff will scan the medicines, confirm the quantities and condition of the products, and acknowledge receipt electronically.
The information will then be transmitted to a central platform, allowing NatPharm to determine whether consignments were delivered as expected.
Madzikwa said the system would record details including product identity, batch numbers, expiry dates, quantities dispatched and received, as well as GPS and time information at designated checkpoints.
Temperature information for cold-chain medicines will also be captured where monitoring sensors are available.
The system will generate alerts when consignments arrive short, fail to reach expected checkpoints or do not receive confirmation at the destination facility.
Returned medicines will also have to be scanned back into stock, reducing unexplained differences between dispatched and received quantities.
NatPharm supplies medicines to more than 1,700 public health facilities in Zimbabwe, largely through a quarterly ordering system.
Madzikwa said integrating the tracking platform with the Ministry of Health and Child Care’s electronic logistics management information system would provide a clearer picture of medicine consumption and stock levels across the country.
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He said the data could help authorities identify shortages earlier and redistribute medicines from facilities with excess stock to those facing shortages.
The system could also help reduce medicine wastage by providing visibility of batch numbers and expiry dates, allowing products nearing expiry to be prioritised for redistribution.
Madzikwa said NatPharm had not yet determined how much money the system would save, as the company wanted to assess its performance during the pilot phase.
He said wider implementation would depend on reliable connectivity or offline-capable devices at health facilities, staff training and sufficient pilot data.
The tracking system forms part of NatPharm’s broader digital transformation programme, which includes plans for a modern finance and supply-chain platform, barcode-based warehouse management and GPS and scanning technology for delivery vehicles.
Madzikwa said the long-term goal was to enable NatPharm, the Ministry of Health and public health facilities to work with the same real-time information on the location and availability of medicines.
About the Author
Cecilia Attah is a tech analyst with a degree from Benue State University. She covers tech news and startups at TechRegard with a focus on how technology is transforming Africa and shaping the global landscape.
