Online Reporter
Rumbidzayi Zinyuke-Senior Health Reporter
NatPharm is rolling out an electronic, serialised tracking system that will provide a digital trail for medicines from the warehouse to public health facilities, in a major move to curb diversion and pilferage in the public health supply chain.
The system, which is undergoing testing ahead of a pilot programme, will enable NatPharm and authorised health authorities to track individual consignments, including their batch numbers, quantities, destinations and movement, while automatically flagging discrepancies, delays and deliveries that deviate from planned routes.
NatPharm managing director Mr Newman Madzikwa said the system was being introduced to close loopholes inherent in the paper-based system, which makes it difficult to establish in real time whether medicines dispatched from its warehouses reach their intended destinations 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.
He said the move had also been prompted by growing public and parliamentary concerns over medicines being diverted from public institutions for private resale.
“An electronic, serialised tracking system addresses both problems directly: it closes the visibility gap in our own operations, and it gives NatPharm and oversight authorities a verifiable digital trail,” said Mr Madzikwa.
The system will introduce electronic verification at every stage of the supply chain, beginning when medicines arrive from suppliers.
Quantities, batch numbers and regulatory registration details will be captured electronically against purchase orders, with discrepancies such as over-deliveries flagged immediately.
When orders are prepared for public health facilities, every item will be scanned against a picking list, followed by an independent verification of quantities before the consignment is sealed.
Each consignment will then be assigned a unique barcode and digital dispatch manifest linked to a specific vehicle, driver and destination facility.
“This dual check alone removes a lot of room for error we had under the paper process,” Mr Madzikwa said.
At the receiving facility, he said, pharmacists or dispensary staff will scan the medicines against the digital manifest, confirm the quantities and condition of the products, and electronically acknowledge receipt. The information will immediately be transmitted to the central platform, effectively closing the loop between medicines dispatched by NatPharm and those received at health facilities.
Mr Madzikwa said the system would capture product identity, batch numbers, expiry dates, quantities dispatched and received, GPS-timestamped movement at checkpoints and destination facilities, while cold-chain information would also be captured for temperature-sensitive products where sensors are deployed.
He said access to the information will be role-based, with NatPharm logistics teams having access to live dispatch and delivery dashboards, while the Ministry of Health and Child Care’s supply chain and pharmacy directorates will have visibility of stock movement and facility-level receipts.
Designated oversight and audit bodies will also be able to access the audit trail when investigating discrepancies.
Mr Madzikwa said the system would make it increasingly difficult for medicines to disappear from the public supply chain without leaving a trace.
“Stock can no longer sit anywhere in our warehouses without a scanned, system-recorded location, there is no such thing as an untracked shelf,” he added.
He said consignments would have a documented chain of custody from the time they left NatPharm to the time they were received at a health facility.
“If a consignment arrives short, follows a route or takes a length of time inconsistent with a normal delivery, or a receiving scan simply never happens, the system flags that automatically rather than a physical count discovering stock missing weeks later,” Mr Madzikwa said.
He said this would also enable medicines subject to regulatory concerns to be electronically suspended, preventing them from being picked or dispatched.
Discrepancies will trigger exception reports to both the health facility supervisor and NatPharm’s control centre, while delayed consignments will be flagged when they fail to reach expected checkpoints within the normal delivery window.
The system will also require returned medicines to be scanned back into stock, reducing opportunities for unexplained variances.
The development comes as NatPharm seeks to strengthen availability of medicines across the public health system, supplying more than 1 700 public health facilities, largely through a quarterly ordering cycle.
Mr Madzikwa said integration of the tracking system with the Ministry’s electronic logistics management information system (eLMIS) would provide a more accurate picture of medicine consumption and stock levels across the country.
“Real consumption and receipt data flowing up from facilities gives NatPharm and the Ministry a far more accurate, near real-time picture of what is actually being used and where, rather than relying solely on periodic manual returns,” he said.
The data would allow the authorities to identify emerging shortages earlier and redistribute medicines from facilities where stocks were lying idle to those facing shortages.
The system is also expected to reduce medicine expiries by providing batch-level visibility of products and their expiry dates, allowing stocks approaching expiry to be prioritised for redistribution to facilities where they can be used in time.
NatPharm is, however, yet to quantify the financial savings expected from the system, Mr Madzikwa said, as the company wanted to first obtain evidence from the pilot.
“Before we can roll this out across the wider network, we need dependable connectivity or offline-capable devices at facility level, a structured and phased training programme so every receiving point is confident using it, and enough validated pilot data to confirm the system holds up under everyday operating conditions,” Mr Madzikwa said.
The electronic tracking system forms part of a broader digital transformation programme at NatPharm, which includes proposals for a modern finance and supply-chain platform, fully digitised barcode-driven warehouse management across its depots and GPS and scanning technology on delivery vehicles.
He said the long-term objective was to create a supply chain in which NatPharm, the Ministry and public health facilities work from the same real-time information on the location and availability of medicines.
“The underlying goal, in line with our own vision for 2030, is a supply chain where every stakeholder, from our depots to the Ministry to the receiving facility, is working off the same real-time, trustworthy picture of where medicines are and where they are needed, because that is ultimately what protects both accountability and patients,” he said.
