Today has been a busy but very productive day.  I promised on my last entry to provide more information on what I am actually working on. 

To explain my work, I will need to draw a quick picture of the different entities that are involved in the project.  The real aim of the project is to improve visibility withing the Ghanaian Public Health Sector's supply chain and really make health commodities available whenever needed by the citizens.  To improve the logistics system in the region, the Ghana Ministry of Health has partnered with the USAID|DELIVER PROJECT (http://deliver.jsi.com/dhome) to design a new system for delivering health supplies.  IBM is partnering with USAID through the CSC program to bring our expertise in developing a plan for the Ghana Ministry of Health.  And finally, IBM has partnered with CDC Development Solutions who is the implementation partner.

We have local liaisons from CDC Development Solutions who have been with us from the start of the project to help facilitate the logistics and also assist with getting the right resources from the various stakeholders who need to participate in the project. 

It is exciting to be part of something that can really have an impact on people's lives and  help increase people's speedy access to health commodities.  The Ghanaian government agencies whom we have interacted with so far, all seem to be very committed to improving Healthcare access and  building a sustainable system.  The commitment by the government is really refreshing and has impressed the entire team.  We are all determined to deliver something useful and that we can be proud of at the end of our project.  Hence, the reason why it has been a busy day and I expect that it will only get busier in the upcoming weeks.

Although there are 12 of us, we have been subdivided into three teams made up of 4 people.  My subgroup is focused on the technical requirements that would be needed to implement a system.  Below are some pictures from our first working day.  The first picture is with all of the attendees, made up of various agencies from the Ghanaian Ministry of Health, IBM CSC members, USAID, John Snow International and CDC Development Solutions (CDS).

The entire group

Technical subgroup

End of the day.  Picture with the IBM CSC team.