In early 2016, after the two and a half year Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leon led to over 11,000 deaths and overwhelmed the medical infrastructure, the British Department of International Development (DFID) began a large scale distribution program, known as the Free Healthcare Initiative, to rebuild the devastated medical capabilities. The program was designed to reestablish distribution systems for medicines and vital health supplies to over 2,000 hospitals, medical stores, and remote dispensaries.
DFID had hired a contractor in early 2016 that quickly became mired—only a tiny fraction of the critically needed supplies were being distributed. During the Fall of 2016 DFID sought out Logenix and negotiations entailed to replace the stalled contractor. Reaching agreement, Logenix was mandated to get the program operating to expectations by distributing over a fifteen hundred tons of supplies, via seven thousand deliveries, within a fourteen-month period. If this Herculean task could be accomplished, the healthcare infrastructure would be considered restored and the efforts turned back over the government of Sierra Leon.
It was agreed Logenix would take over the warehousing infrastructure. One warehouse located in Freetown was too small for both the medicine storage and the high volume packaging operation but was the only temperature controlled warehouse in Sierra Leone. Another warehouse was located outside of the city where supplies would be shuttled daily to the Freetown warehouse to be packaged and distributed. Logenix hired a talented small group of ex-pats who quickly assembled a fifty-person local labor force, along with local contractors to execute deliveries by truck, motorcycle and even boat. The road infrastructure was so poor many of the remote towns could only be reached by motorcycle and almost one hundred small villages best accessible by small boat.
By November, Logenix was operating and was able to make the very first high volume deliveries to the major hospitals in each of Sierra Leone’s sixteen districts. Every four months thereafter, each of the 2000 hospitals, medical stores, clinics and dispensaries received their allocated medicines and supplies. By January of 2018, within the fourteen-month time period, Logenix restored the Sierra Leone healthcare distribution system, on the budget agreed with DFID in late 2016, and the now well operating warehouse and delivery operation turned back to the government.
