RISK MANAGEMENT IN HEALTH SUPPLY CHAIN IN KENYA

Abstract

The actions, people, organization of resources, and information used to support the procurement
and delivery of goods or services for use inside a healthcare institution are referred to as supply
chain management in hospitals. Similar to this, one element of supply chain management is
carrying out actions that transform natural resources and raw materials as well as other product
components before providing them to particular users. A hospital's supply chain management
team should ideally ensure the availability of medical supplies like defibrillators, hospital
stretchers, patient monitoring equipment, sterilizers, electrocardiogram machines, surgical
tables and equipment, units for performing electric surgery, and anesthesia machines. There may
be various risks involved in the supply chain management department while ensuring the
ongoing availability of such equipment in the medical institution. In this case, risk management
will include looking into all potential ambiguities related to the hospital supply chain operations
and choosing the best course of action for addressing the risks' effects on a certain department.
There have been several reported incidents of medical malpractices that has led to death of
innocent Kenyans and in some situations. Despite the efforts by government and other
stakeholders like the World Health Organization (WHO) to streamline the health care sector
operations and processes, there are still elements within the health care system that continue to
interfere and compromise the health care service delivery. The main objective of this paper is to
analyze and evaluate the healthcare supply chain aspects to eliminate unnecessary costs and
factors that hinder the realization of the full potentials of the healthcare supply chain in Kenya.
Keywords: Risk Management, Health Supply Chain, Kenya