| Coca-Cola partners with MSD to distribute ARVs | Send to a friend |
| Friday, 17 June 2011 21:41 |
 Hai. A Coca-Cola truck rumbled down the road, ferrying its bubbly, sugary cargo to shops and kiosks in the northern part of the country around the edge of Kilimanjaro National Park. The one thing you can be sure of finding in any far-flung corner of Tanzania is a bottle of Coke. A new pilot programme—the first of its kind—aims to make anti-retroviral drugs as easily accessible as a bottle of soda by tapping into Coca-Cola’s established delivery network throughout Tanzania. Tanzania’s government supply-chain agency, the Medical Stores Department (MSD), currently distributes anti-retroviral, malaria medication, and other drugs to 500 points around Tanzania, but President Jakaya Kikwete wants medicine taken to the doorsteps of all of the country’s 5,000 health facilities. Widening the distribution net so broadly could prove a daunting task, since Tanzania’s current distribution system is already overtaxed, and even the best health facilities have trouble keeping all the necessary medicines in stock. Enter Coca-Cola. The beverage giant, which opened its first bottling plant in Tanzania in 1952, has spent decades finding the most efficient way to reach distant villages and adapting to changing roadway conditions. Through three local bottling franchises, the company is sharing its distribution routes with the government supply-chain agency. The program, a public-private partnership that is now being tried in nine of the country’s regions, lets MSD use Coca-Cola’s delivery maps and distribution partners to create a new delivery model, with the aim of moving drugs around the country more efficiently. “If anyone is sure how to get stuff the last mile, it’s Coke,” says Mr Shaaban Husein, director of finance and administration at MSD. The Coke idea isn’t totally new. “When I travel to the developing world, Coke feels ubiquitous,” Ms Melinda Gates said in a TV talk show last September. “Coke’s success … makes you wonder, ‘How is it that they can get Coke to these far-flung places?’ If they can do that, why can’t governments and NGOs do the same thing?” Ms Gates went on to challenge NGOs both to adopt Coke’s real-time monitoring system and to tap into Coke’s local talent networks. The Tanzania project aims to do both of these things. Tanzania has a per capita GDP of $550 and ranks 148 out of the 169 countries on the United Nations’ human development index, putting it behind Haiti but ahead of Afghanistan in the areas of health, education, and living standards. A mere 3,000 miles of Tanzania’s roadways are paved, and the long rainy season leaves many of the country’s 50,000 miles of dirt roads impassable. Some remote villages are accessible only by donkey. It takes more than an hour to drive the 10 miles from the Kilimanjaro Airport to Mererani, home of the country’s prized Tanzanite mine. The rutted dirt road is littered with holes, and you have to wonder about road conditions in other parts of the country if this is what a main industrial thoroughfare looks like. From large trucks to pushcarts to donkeys, Coca-Cola uses a mix of methods to move bottles around Tanzania. The company is good at tailoring the delivery method to conditions. In contrast, MSD has a fleet of Land Rovers and trucks that it currently relies on to distribute drugs, vehicles that can’t handle some particularly bad roads. Mr Adrian Ristow, a South Africa-based special-projects coordinator for Coke, said that the pilot programme had identified areas where smaller vehicles such as motorcycles could be used to get to hard-to-reach areas. “We’re seeing some environments where large vehicles were used that definitely weren’t the most efficient way to get the product out to very small clinics with very small drop sizes,” Mr Ristow said. While Coke’s supply chain has been tapped in the past on an ad hoc basis—in the early part of last decade, Unaids collaborated with Coca-Cola in Malawi to distribute information on HIV/Aids through their distribution routes—this is the first time something has been attempted on this scale. Coke doesn’t have a stellar public-health record—think of the obesity crisis in the West and the bottlers in drought-prone areas of India that were accused of using too much water, leaving little for local farmers. But the power of the company’s supply chain is undeniable. Sold at more than 900,000 retail locations throughout Africa, the beverage giant has unrivaled reach in the continent, and Mr Ristow said that if the Tanzania project is a success, the company will consider expanding it in other markets in Africa. This project is one of the ways Coca-Cola is responding to the United Nations’ Business Call to Action, which is aimed at harnessing the private sector to help reach Millennium Development Goals. Coke is currently committed to the project in Tanzania until the end of the current pilot, set to end in December. (www.theguardian.co.uk) Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
