Giving efficiently:
Improving medical product donation
Something as simple as sterile latex gloves can save a life. But access to such basic medical supplies is anything but simple for many in the world.
In Ghana, for example, sometimes donations are the only viable method of obtaining crucial medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, and consumable supplies like gloves and gauze.
Seth Wiafe, MPH—a native of Ghana—specializes in geographic information systems (GIS) in the School of Public Health, where he is an assistant professor, academic director of the health geoinformatics program, and interim chair of the department of environmental and occupational health.
He hopes to see his home country become the birthplace of a new model for more efficient and more effective donations of medical products.
"Do these donations really go to places where they are needed most?" he asks. "Are they helping?"
Mr. Wiafe is directing a project that aims to answer such questions. It will also make recommendations for a more efficient medical donation system.
The project brings together LLU School of Public Health and a nonprofit organization called The Partnership for Quality Medical Donation (PQMD), which is sponsoring the research. PQMD is made up of nongovernment organizations and manufacturers of health care products. It works to raise the standards for global medical product donations.
Probing something as complex as the medical donation system for an entire country requires both field work and computer analysis.
The field work is being done in-country with the cooperation of two universities. The five regions in the country’s southern half are being studied by Valley View University, located 30 miles from the capital of Accra; the five northern regions are being studied by Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, found in the city of Kumasi.
At each of these universities, one student has been selected for a 10-month fellowship, which began this past June. Under the direction of a faculty advisor from their home university—and equipped with GPS units and laptops—the two students have spent the past several months distributing surveys and collecting data about how medical product donations are received and, in turn, distributed.
They have given 51 surveys to nongovernment organizations, government agencies, United Nations operations, faith-based organizations, and PQMD corporate members across the country. Everyone is looking forward to the results.
“I believe my participation in this project will help save untold lives and improve health in Ghana,” says Winnifred Oware, the Valley View University student working on the project. She is supervised by Dr. Daniel Ganu at Valley View. "This is a very viable project, and, if done well, it will have tremendous benefit for the people of Ghana," he says.
After data collection is complete, spatial and statistical analysis comes next.
The faculty supervisors from Ghana, along with Mr. Wiafe and LLU research associate Ogonnaya Dotson-Newman, MPH, are working on this project. ESRI’s ArcGIS software will be used for spatial analysis and mapping, and SPSS software will be used for statistical analysis.
In the end, this project will result in a proposed national model for medical product donation.
"Our hope is that this information can be used to develop improved donation strategies for Ghana and, perhaps, provide a model that can be used to improve practices in other countries, as well," says Lori Warrens, executive director at PQMD.
Mr. Wiafe agrees. "If this project is a success, we hope the model developed will be useful in other countries" he says. "But there is also the possibility of repeating the study in several countries. What we discover to work in Ghana may be different than what works in Kenya, for example."
After the project is over, the two participating students from Ghana will be invited to come to the United States to present their findings at PQMD’s annual educational conference—to be held in February 2008—and at other professional conferences.
This kind of partnership with organizations such as PQMD helps fulfill LLU’s global mission, says Mr. Wiafe. And Ms. Warrens says the partnership allows PQMD to benefit from the world-class academic expertise.
"Loma Linda University’s School of Public Health geoinformatics program is recognized as a leading provider of health geoinformatics in developing countries," she explains. "Partnering with LLU expands our capacity to develop research that ultimately improves the health of millions of people around the world."
