Pandemic response and humanitarian logistics

The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have been exacerbated by unpredictable human behaviour, a lack of coordination and disrupted health supply chains. As we will be confronted with more epidemics and pandemics in the future, in this chapter, we develop an overview of the most critical lessons learned from humanitarian (health) logistics that can be applied to pandemic response to prevent disruptions and ensure an efficient and fair delivery of health services. Starting from an overview of lessons from past pandemics, we investigate two specific supply chain problems in the Covid19 response: (i) the PPE supply chain at the onset of the pandemic as a case for rapid scale-up, and (ii) the vaccine supply chains that combine volatile supply and demand with the complexity of large batch-sizes and demanding cold chain requirements. For each part, we develop concrete lessons learned and make recommendations for tools from humanitarian logistics that can be applied to the specific health logistics challenge.