Developing a resilient healthcare supply chain to prevent disruption in the wake of emergency health crisis

PurposeThe study aims to identify and analyse the drivers of resilient healthcare supply chain (HCSC) preparedness in emergency health outbreaks to prevent disruption in healthcare services delivery in the context of India.Design/methodology/approachThe present study has opted for the grey clustering method to identify and analyse the drivers of resilient HCSC preparedness during health outbreaks into high, moderate and low important grey classes based on Grey-Delphi, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and Shannon's information entropy (IE) theory.FindingsThe drivers of the resilient HCSC are scrutinised using the Grey-Delphi technique. By implementing AHP and Shannon's IE theory and depending upon structure, process and outcome measures of HCSC, eleven drivers of a resilient HCSC preparedness are clustered as highly important, three drivers into moderately important, and two drivers into a low important group.Originality/valueThe analysis and insights developed in the present study would help to plan and execute a viable, resilient emergency HCSC preparedness during the emergence of any health outbreak along with the stakeholders' coordination. The results of the study offer information, rationality, constructiveness, and universality that enable the wider application of AHP-IE/Grey clustering analysis to HCSC resilience in the wake of pandemics.

A Comparative Study on the knowledge and attitude of COVID-19 among Urban and Rural populations of Bangladesh. (preprint)

AimThis study is aimed to identify the awareness and behavioral perspective on COVID-19 between urban and rural people of Bangladesh during the period of outbreak. MethodsA community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in 30 districts of Bangladesh, where 322 participants from urban and 312 from rural area. Participants were selected through convenience sampling. ResultsRural people are found to be much more inter connected to receive information from neighbor. Regarding the incubation periods and the general symptoms, knowledge differs significantly from urban to rural. Even their precautionary and transmission knowledge is found to associate in most of the cases. During this outbreak, urban people significantly increase their religious habits and also believe that there will some major change of life after outbreak. DiscussionThe study reflected that health education program needed to aware about COVID-19 in both urban and rural in Bangladesh that helps in formulating and executing communication and outbreak management.