MSF Medical Product Procurement

Item Description:

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has set up its own procurement centres, which are in charge of the purchase, storage and shipment of drugs, vaccines, specialised food items, laboratory reagents and equipments, medical material and equipments and all the goods necessary for MSF to carry out its missions

Like many other humanitarian actors, MSF is aware that the quality of drugs is not always properly guaranteed on the global market (WHO Medicines Strategy 2004-2007).

The general policy of the organisation is to select its sources of medical products and supply them to its teams wherever they operate and wherever MSF is authorised to do so.

To this end, MSF has set up its own European Supply Centres (MSF Logistique, Bordeaux in France in 1986; MSF Supply in Neder-Over-Heembeek, Belgium in 1989; and Amsterdam Procurement Unit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1984). The objective is twofold:

• Operational: to supply medical and non-medical relief goods to MSF teams according to the requested delivery date
• Qualitative: to keep a strict control on the quality of supply and make sure that it is compliant with MSF’s technical requirements

When drugs are supplied by the European Supply Centres, MSF considers that it is the moral responsibility of the organisation to guarantee their quality. The MSF Executive Committee has consequently asked MSF pharmacists to develop a qualification procedure in order to achieve this objective. The acceptability of pharmaceutical products intended for import by MSF in countries for its programmes, and supplied by MSF European Supply Centres, is assessed according to the “MSF Medical Product Qualification Scheme” for International Pharmaceutical Supply.

In some countries, however, MSF is not authorised to import medical products. In that case, the MSF qualification procedure cannot apply and the responsibility to assure the quality of the drugs rests with National Drug Authorities.

Qualification of pharmaceutical products

In order to avoid any duplication of work, any product that is pre-qualified by the WHO Pre-Qualification Programme (PQ) or that is registered in a highly regulated country is automatically qualified by MSF.

Products that are neither WHO pre-qualified nor registered in a highly regulated country and that present an interest for the organisation will be fully evaluated by the MSF pharmacists. The evaluation is carried out against WHO norms and standards. The evaluation includes two steps (details are given in the MSF Medical Product Qualification Scheme):

1. The assessment of the manufacturing site for compliance with WHO Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) is the necessary first step of the evaluation. Only products that are manufactured in WHO GMP compliant facilities will be evaluated. GMP inspections carried out by the WHO PQ inspectors, or inspectorates recognised by MSF are taken into consideration by MSF. For facilities which have not been previously inspected and approved by WHO PQ or a SRA inspectorate, the MSF International Pharmacist Coordinator appoints a GMP expert to perform an audit.
2. The second step of the process is the evaluation of a product dossier according to standards set by WHO, and based on a standard Product Questionnaire common to the Interagency Pharmacist Group (UNICEF, ICRC, The Global Fund, WHO procurement center, UNFPA, GDF and MSF).

MSF Medical Product Qualification SchemePDF — 338.51 KB DOWNLOAD