Abstract
As we come to the end of the current era of Millennium Development Goals, the global health community has begun making predictions about the future state of global health in the next twenty years. These bold predictions are based on current socioeconomic trends mainly in developing countries, which suggest a significant reduction in the burden of commonly prevalent maternal and child health conditions over time. An example of these predictions is contained in the work recently published by The Lancet Commissions in December 2013, titled “Global health 2035: a world converging within a generation.” Global health development cannot be sustainably achieved without concurrent improvements in the performance of public health supply chains that deliver the health commodities required to maintain and improve health and well-being. Therefore, the gains in global health forecasted in The Lancet Commissions paper require us to make similar predictions about public health supply chains as well. The purpose of this paper is to provide these predictions. More importantly, we also aim to provide more context for these predictions by suggesting what implications they might have for the implementation of performance-based financing (PBF) schemes in public health supply chains. As examples of PBF schemes increase, evidence is beginning to emerge of their usefulness in improving access to health services in resource-limited settings. We aim to provoke thoughts among our target audience about how PBF might be useful for future developments in supply chains. Our target audience is key decision makers who actually have the responsibility for deciding on implementing the innovations we have predicted, or who will be at the forefront of commissioning funds for these initiatives. We begin by briefly summarizing the context for global health in 2035 as predicted by The Lancet Commissions report. We then delve into our own forecasts for the future of public health supply chains while identifying implication for PBF schemes under the functions of financing, supply chain design, information systems, storage and distribution, human resources, governance, and accountability.
