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Mwanza Zone

Mwanza zone was established in 1993, and it currently provides Health Commodity services to the regions of Mwanza, Shinyanga, Mara, Simiyu, and the districts of Nyang’hwale, Geita municipal, and Geita District Council as part of Geita region. The five areas served by the Mwanza zone currently have 1337 Health Facilities categorized into 1 Zonal Hospital, 5 Regional Referral Hospitals, 50 Hospitals entailing District Hospitals, Faith-based Hospitals and Military Hospitals, 144 Health Centres, and 1137 Dispensaries. The highlighted numbers of Health Facilities are attended by a multi-profession team of 60 staff with diverse knowledge in Material Management and Procurement, Business Administration and marketing, Accounts, Logicians (Drivers), Pharmaceutical Sciences, Laboratory technologists, and Biomedical Engineering. This cocktail of professionalism has a definite mesmerizing coverage towards the best quality service delivery, preferably in the orbits of marketing, MSD products technical know-how, and customer services, among other professional requirements.  

MWANZA ZONE BUSINESS STRATEGY:

We strategize our activities aligning with the Medium-Term Strategic Plan (PMTSP) III (2021-2026), which has 42 targets and 102 Key Performance Indicators. Under this PMTSP-III, we strictly focus on the objectives of the Care and fight for HIV and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by a peer educator providing knowledge sharing in HIV and NCDs every month. We see corruption as a barrier to development and justice by implementing the National anti-corruption strategy. We also focus on things crucial to improving Customer service delivery by ensuring on-time ILS delivery and inventory management by conducting periodic cycle counts and working on the discrepancies. All these issues, including continually capacitating our multidisciplinary team, have a momentous enhancement to carry out our core mandate functions of efficiently storing, selling, and distributing Health Commodities to Health facilities.

STORAGE FACILITY: 

MSD Mwanza has a warehouse with a storage capacity of 2742 square meters. We are hiring 300 square meters from GPSA. We have a budgeted plan to construct another massive facility in Nyamhongolo with a capacity of 6000 square meters.

SERVICE COVERAGE:

We provide our services to health facilities belonging to the Government, Faith-Based Organisations, and private sectors, provided they have accreditation from the Government of Tanzania. We ensure the availability and accessibility of health commodities to our customers despite some being in hard-to-reach areas. We do this because we are concerned with our motto, ‘Dedicated to save life.’

Currently, our customers are to the tune of 1337, as mentioned above, and the number is expected to increase more than that, actually from time to time, depending on the Government’s plan to fulfill its obligation of ensuring Health care delivery is available and accessible to all Tanzanians.

We have a wide range of products, such as Medicine, Laboratory reagents, and medical equipment. For medicines, we have a variety of them, including narcotics used to relieve pain in surgical procedures, of which we are the sole supplier.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT:  

Every financial year, we conduct stakeholder meetings with customers to discuss various agendas embedded in the supply chain of Health Commodities. In these meetings, we provide updates on MSD plans and progress, receive opinions and MSD performance evaluations from customers, receive complaints, discuss the challenges arising from this supply chain, and finally agree on favorable resolutions.

Government officials from regions and districts are invited to these meetings. We expect them to streamline financial cases, especially those from Health Facilities that owe us. In addition to the economic issues, the meetings provided them with updates on our operations, thereby uncovering many questions they had about MSD before conducting the same sessions.

To recognize customers with huge funds, we segment customers into corporate and regular customers. We attend to corporate customers using a fast-tracking approach. For regular customers: we can fast-track these segmented customers when we receive emergency orders, especially for the outbreak of horrifying diseases such as cholera and trauma.

We have several social media groups with different forums to streamline communication. One of the prominent groups is a WhatsApp group that provides updates on a planned and ongoing ILS distribution to the health facilities of lower levels of primary health care facilities.

CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS HANDLINGAND FEEDBACK:

We are optimistic about customer complaints. The complaints we receive from customers provide us with an opportunity to excel more in our day-to-day business. We value the customers who raise complaints, and we act fast for better solutions. We receive complaints from all means of communication. We accept them through telecommunication and letters.

All complaints are first registered in Epicor-10. Complaints within our capacity are resolved within three days, and the customers are provided with feedback. Some complaints need the attention of Headquarters. Such complaints are escalated to the same destination, and the customers are instantly informed about that escalation within a limited period of five days. Escalated complaints may take longer than usual to resolve, but the customers are kept informed of the status of handling them. The resolved complaints are then closed. Monthly customer visits of at least one corporate and eight non-corporate customers assist in identifying complaints before the customers lodge them with us. The same procedures for handling such complaints are adhered to.

 

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY:

We appreciate and care for the community we save by compassionately assisting disadvantaged groups, including orphanages, pregnant mothers, children under five years of age, and people in prisons. To express our appreciation, we visit these individuals and provide humanitarian needs such as food, clothes, and medical supplies like diapers, among other things. We also extend our social responsibilities to engage in various sports and climb Kilimanjaro.

 

OUR BEHAVIORS:

We embrace our multi-professionalism to achieve our goals efficiently. We respect one another, allowing us to discuss our activities and ultimately adhere to our agreement. We appreciate and accept the innovations shown by talented individuals to reveal them positively in a team. We do all these things because we always discuss and agree before executing our goals.

 

About MSD

Medical Stores Department (MSD) was established by the Act of Parliament No.13 of 1993 as an autonomous department under the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children responsible for developing, maintaining and managing an efficient and cost effective system of procurement, storage and distribution of approved medicines and medical supplies required for use by all public health facilities.