Giving Compass' Take:

• Morten Wendelbo and Christine Crudo Blackburn argue that the small number of suppliers for medical supplies used around the globe can leave the world underresourced in an emergency situation. 

• How can funders help to diversify the medical supply chain to avoid catastrophe? Is there a role for social entrepreneurship and/or impact investing?

• Learn how a supply chain project is increasing access to healthy foods. 

Many different types of important medical equipment and medicines either come from abroad or rely on a single producer.

For the medical industry, approximately 80 percent of all pharmaceuticals used by Americans are produced overseas.

The majority of this production takes place in China and India.

Forty-three percent of saline in the U.S. comes from Puerto Rico. The U.S. was already running below optimal levels of saline when Hurricane Maria hit.

Rapid transportation of goods also allows most industries to rely on “just in time” deliveries. That means goods arrive only shortly before they are needed, rather than arriving in large shipments.

In most situations, and for most goods, that causes few issues. However, when there’s an insufficient stockpile, delivery delays can be life-threatening. Many of our hospitals receive shipments of critical pharmaceuticals three times a day.

There are two ways the “just in time” system can be disrupted: an unexpected surge in demand or a delay in delivery.

If a pandemic disease severely affected China or India, where large shares of medicines come from, production could be knocked out or slowed. That would leave the rest of the world vulnerable to the disease’s spread, because there would be no supply of crucial medicines to combat it.

Read the full article on by global medical supply chain by Morten Wendelbo and Christine Crudo Blackburn at The Conversation.