Establishing life‐saving essential medicines and medical supplies core pipeline to support rapid health emergency responses in 10 States of Sudan Sudan continues to face protracted, complex and overlapping humanitarian challenges. A total of 8.6 million people needs humanitarian health assistance in 2020. Drought, flood, internal conflicts, and concurrent disease outbreaks are quite common in the country. Last year alone, the country witnessed six concurrent outbreaks of water and sanitation-related, vector-borne and vaccine-preventable diseases. Accordingly, the FMOH, WHO and UNICEF prioritized four-major hazards (i.e. floods, disease outbreaks, mass casualties and drought) to prepare for and respond to in 2020. According to this multi-hazard plan, 14 out of 18 States (78%) identified to be at greater risk of four or more of the hazards and targeted for intervention. 

Frequent stock out of essential medicines at the point of service delivery has been attributed to malfunctioning of the logistics and medical supplies systems and critical shortage of medicines and medical supplies in Sudan especially during emergencies. The government’s importation of medicines into the country has been dropping significantly over the past couple of years. A 50 % decrease of importation of essential medicines and supplies was documented by FMOH and WHO in 2019 and resulted already to high out of pocket expenses for the population. Anecdotal evidence attesting further 25% decrease this year. Joint WHO/FMOH assessment on the availability of medicines in health facilities is under preparation. This will create a huge shortage of life-saving medicines and medical supplies in the country. It is the humanitarian imperative to avail life-saving medicines and medical supplies free of charge for affected communities during major emergencies. 

Timely and free-of-charges access to essential medicines and medical supplies in appropriate dosage, forms, and of assured quality, to rapidly respond to emergencies saves-lives of affected population. The list of priority medicines and medical supplies in any given country or context are informed by disease burden, type of emergencies and list of standard essential medicines adopted by the country. Based on this, WHO has been procuring, storing and distributing essential medicines and medical supplies to support humanitarian response in Sudan. For instance, WHO has been providing essential medicines and medical supplies to NGOs and government counterparts under its flagship Rapid Response Kit (RRK) project funded by OFDA/USAID in all humanitarian priority States in Sudan over years. It has also been procuring and distributing life-saving emergency medicines and medical supplies during major public health emergencies in Sudan. 

The Interagency Emergency Health Kit (IEHK) and Trauma and Emergency Services Kit (TESK) have been widely accepted and used to respond to various emergencies globally. However, in preparing this proposal, WHO identified and prioritized the critical needs for medicines and medical supplies needed to respond to common emergencies in Sudan based on disease profile, recurrence outbreaks and current gaps. The WHO ensures the procured medicines and medical supplies meet national and international standards for safety and quality.  

Therefore, this project will procure life-saving medicines and medical supplies to establish a core pipeline that supports rapid emergency response by NGOs supported by SHF to provide essential health services while ensuring continuity of services during emergencies. The project will procure various modules of 320 IEHK  and 48 TESK. Additional bulk items missed from these standard kits will be procured. The items will be distributed through SHF supported NGO partners as guided by the Strategic Review Committee (SRC). The WHO will liaise with the health cluster to distribute the items through other mechanisms in areas where there is no SHF partner. These medicines and medical supplies will serve a total of 800,480 population (70% women and children) in 10 States of Sudan over a period of 9 month