With the rising cost of vaccines and the greater storage capacity now required at every level of the cold chain, countries in the EMR and beyond are forced to find mechanisms to lower stock levels, reduce wastage, accurately forecast vaccine needs and prevent equipment break-down. Achieving these outcomes requires a consistently high standard of supply chain management, which can only be achieved if all the links in the supply chain comply with current international standards for storage and distribution.

With aims to ensure that the above-mentioned outcomes are achieved, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have been enhancing their efforts to accelerate immunization supply chain improvements and performance in the EMR and beyond. They are working to achieve this goal through implementing the comprehensive Effective Vaccine Management (EVM) Initiative– a four-step strategy for continuous immunization supply chain improvement, quality management, optimization and innovation. This initiative was launched to offer the materials and tools needed to monitor and assess vaccine supply chains and to help countries to improve their supply chain performance.

Within this context, a delegation comprising 26 representatives from UNICEF, WHO, MoH Iraq, MoH Jordan, MoH Libya (NCDC) met in Amman, Jordan to conduct the first Beta test for the EVM 2.0 tool between April 8 and April 12, 2018. This tool, a key component of the EVM initiative, works as an EVM assessment manager. It is an online platform designed to enable countries to manage their EVM assessments and related EVM information. It allows for the assignment, distribution and collection of location questionnaires completed electronically using tablets. Detailed analysis of all data can then be generated at any time.

The group of assessors, evaluating the EVM version 2.0 of this tool also included six team members from GHD| EMPHNET. The role of GHD| EMPHNET’s team was to support the implementation of this testing session in Amman and to later facilitate its implementation in the region.

Over the five-day testing period a series of group activities, open discussions, and field visits were conducted. The aim of these activities was to test the tool’s functionality and practicality and to catch any points for improvement needed before its official use. The feedback collected over the five days covered the following areas; feedback related to the questions, their rationale, sequence, how they are relevant and whether or not they are needed, and feedback related to using the mobile application itself. In this second category, the feedback collected was related to bugs, errors and other issues that need to be fixed in the next version of the application.

The compiled feedback is to serve as a roadmap for WHO and UNICEF delegations to adjust the tool before its launch. Next steps following this session will include a test to be conducted in Iraq, a third Beta test that will be conducted in Bhutan, followed by an Iraq-based country assessment. Other assessments and training workshops in the region will be performed at a later stage.