Table 3.
Challenges in Humanitarian supply chain during COVID-19
| Challenges | References | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Lack of planning and preparedness | Villa et al. (2020), Lancet (2020) | This is concerned with the failure of the policy to contain the spread of COVID-19 and poor preparedness to face the challenges of the pandemic outbreak |
| Extended shortages | HHS (2020 in Appendix 2), CBS News (2020a, b in Appendix 2) | This is related to the shortages of medical and other relief items such as N95 masks, PPE kits, medicine, ventilators, oxygen cylinders, etc |
| Inadequate lab capacity | Acharjee (May 10, 2021 in Appendix 2), Doyle (2020 in Appendix 2) | It means the available capacity of the lab for COVID-19 testing is not sufficient, and it delays the report of the testing |
| Lack of supply of COVID-19 vaccines | Rele (2021), Singh and Mehta (2016), Ocampo and Yamagishi (2020), Abbasi et al. (2020), Alam et al. (2021) | Due to the lack of supply of COVID-19 vaccines, the distribution is managed in different phases. In the first phase, the vaccines are provided to health workers and people above 60 years. The second phase is considered for people of more than 45 years, and the third phase is for people of more than 18 years |
| Lack of awareness and hesitancy in acceptance of the vaccines | Pogue et al. (2020), Dror et al. (2020), Schoch-Spana et al. (2020) | Lack of awareness and hesitancy in acceptance of the vaccines defeat the purpose of vaccination. It is necessary to address the concerns of the population and bridge the communication gaps |
| Need of Home-based-primary care services (HBPC) | Ornstein et al. (2015), Totten et al. (2016), Stall et al. (2014), Pisano et al. (2020) | Due to shortages of beds, hospitals and healthcare facilities are provided to only critical patients. The moderate patients are suggested to home quarantine and get the services of HBPC |
| Lack of application of advanced technologies | Abd-alrazaq et al. (2020), Kumar, Singh, et al. (2020), Narwane et al. (2020), Tareq et al. (2021), Javaid and Khan (2021) | It is concerned with the application of Blockchain technology, IoT, Big data analytics, Cloud of Things, Additive manufacturing in data monitoring, telemedicine, home care of patients, and rapid production of medical equipment |
| Lack of supply of medical oxygen | Dondorp et al. (2020), The Wire (2021 in Appendix 2) | The lack of supply of oxygen cylinders was observed in the second phase of COVID-19 in India. Due to uneven distribution and an increase in a sudden demand for oxygen cylinders, many hospitals run out of oxygen, resulting in the death of many patients in different hospitals |
| Medical waste disposal crisis | Hantoko et al. (2021), Nzediegwu and Chang (2020), Wang et al. (2020) | COVID-19 medical wastes are highly infectious, and separate treatment of the medical waste and other waste became challenging for developing and low-income countries |
| Issues related to reliability of RT-PCR test | Esbin et al. (2020), Dong et al. (2021), Arevalo-Rodriguez et al. (2020), Thompson and Lei (2020) | The sensitivity of the RT-PCR test is limited to only 45–60%, and the false-negative rate ranged from 2 to 29%. Thus, it also threatens to spread the virus through the infected people as they declared false negatives |
| Requirement of budgeting and rebudgeting by the government | Anessi-Pessina et al. (2012), Anessi-Pessina et al. (2020) | Rebudgeting is an act to amend the budget during the financial year to meet the immediate impact of COVID-19. Due to uncertainty in the spread of the pandemic, special budgeting and rebudgeting are required to meet the challenges |
| A collaborative approach to maintaining optimal inventory and demand forecasting for humanitarian logistics | Friday et al. (2021), Jabbarzadeh et al. (2019), van der Laan et al. (2016), Panahifar et al. (2015), Rustam et al. (2020) | It is concerned with the collaborative decision-making related to inventory management of the medical items and forecasting the pandemics' spread |
| Poverty and Food insecurity | Laborde et al. (2020), Kumar and Singh (2021a), Pingali et al. (2017), Clapp (2017), Reardon et al. (2019), Kumar, Raut, et al. (2020) | The poverty level has increased due to the disruption of all the business and production activities. Unemployment has also increased, which leads to food security problems among poor people |
| Lack of skilled manpower | Ajisegiri et al. (2020), Kumar and Singh (2021a) | Due to the sudden outbreak and rapid spread of the coronavirus, the demand for skilled manpower is increased. On the other hand, due to social distancing, lockdown, and migration of workers, lack of availability of workers has been observed |