Marta Garcia, a team leader in healthcare procurement at the United Nations, explains how the UN operates from a health care point of view, the opportunities that exist, and how to access them, reports Sophia Kurz.
The United Nations – an organisation whose sole aim is to maintain international peace and security among countries – are to promote economic and social development worldwide. Marta Garcia began by explaining the goals of the UN, aside from maintaining peace and security among countries. The other objectives of the organisation are to promote economic and social development and to promote human rights.
There are different organisational entities within the UN that help to achieve certain outcomes to this end. According to the UN website, ‘The United Nations is part of the UN system, which, in addition to the UN itself, comprises many funds, programmes and specialised agencies, each of which have their own area of work, leadership and budget.’
The Funds and Programmes entity umbrellas different office branches of the UN. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), headquartered in Kenya, is “the voice for the environment within the UN”. This programme, therefore, falls under the jurisdiction of the Funds and Programmes sector of the UN. There are other departments under the Funds and Programmes umbrella, such as the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and The United Nations Development Programme.
The Secretariat branch is the administrative side of the UN that carries out the substantive and administrative work of the United Nations as directed by the General Assembly, the Security Council and the other organs. At its head is the Secretary-General, who provides overall administrative guidance.
“Each organisation has a distinct and separate mandate covering the political, economic, social, scientific, technical, and humanitarian fields”, explains Garcia. Depending on what it is you or your respective organisation offer, you will need to identify UN organisations that might acquire your goods and services.
Supply chain management
“Supply Chain Management basically covers everything to support rapid and effective solutions for peacekeeping, special political and other field missions around the world,” says Garcia. “We need to provide the people in the field doing the difficult work with the best solutions, products and services in the fastest time possible to help them navigate their markets where they need them at the best price as they go.”
The focus for the UN is supporting 36 peace operations in more than 30 countries. “We administer a combined annual budget of over $7bn and we serve more than 270 duty stations very directly and indirectly. We have different places that we work in, but we concentrate more on the African and Middle Eastern region. We have some small scale operations in the Americas, as well as a headquarters in New York. The supply chain is super important because we operate life-saving services.”
The mission of these peace operations is to help countries navigate off the path of violence, and towards peace. The necessity and importance of supply chain management comes into play in these scenarios. Their job is to equip peacekeepers, uniformed or civilian, with primary and life-saving healthcare services, when and if needed.
“Basically, if you’re wounded in the field and you need to be stabilised, we support hospitals and small clinics to be in those different and sometimes inaccessible places, so it’s really important that what we do is always just in time to support these operations.
“Last year we bought $5.6m from British suppliers and only $4.2m for my health category, which is why we’re here. We’re trying to encourage you to check our opportunities and see if it’s the best fit for you because we know you have great suppliers and vendors.”
Major medical commodities procured include vaccines, outsourced medical personnel, blood products, malaria tablets, surgical drugs, basic care drugs, various pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and medical consumables.
At the moment, the available opportunities within the next six months include positions for medical personnel (AMET teams & damage, control surgery teams, medical personnel to staff a level 1-2 hospital), pharmaceutical and vaccines manufacturers (drugs for surgery, malaria prevention, vaccines including COVID-19,), and medical consumables (diagnostic equipment, reagents and consumables, rapid test kits, sutures and ICU equipment).
“Sometimes we need to deploy a mission or open up a hospital very quickly because a tragedy has happened. So we will depend on your good relationship through your whole supply chain to supply any emergency orders, as well as looking at recommendations for transport of dangerous goods.”
Factors to becoming a UN supplier
If you are interested in working with the UN in a healthcare environment, Garcia recommends the following strategy:
Be prepared – register, pick the right commodity to supply, update contact details, review business positions and strategies, learn what the organisation has bought in the past and from whom.
Deciding to Bid – Keep abreast and respond to Expressions of Interests (EOI’s) and Requests for Information’s (RFI’s), understand how bids will be evaluated and the buyers’ requirements, create and in-house tendering data repository.
Planning your Bid – Know the strategy to win each type of solicitation, don’t underestimate the time required to prepare a bid, decide who in your company should be involved, ask for more time if the deadline is unrealistic/unmeetable.
Think like a buyer – Assume the organisation doesn’t know your company and answer questions as completely as possible, read the instructions and respond in line with the criteria, be precise and substantiate your responses with past experience evidenced.
Maximise your competitive advantage – Demonstrate your added value and strengths of your company, be aware of your competitors and what they may bring to the table (and if you can strike a better deal), and set prices realistically with full cost recovery, but also competitively.
Study the terms – Read the contract template and T&C’s and share with legal counsel, understand the UN has privileges and immunities, use the correct tender templates.
Prepare a Bid Document you are proud of – prepare a professionally presented proposal and proofread it, be precise and detailed, remember quality is better than quantity.
Make sure you get feedback – If you are not successful don’t give up – UN vendors who participate in high value procurement (more than $200,000) have an opportunity to obtain additional information on their unsuccessful bids through a debriefing period.
“We need suppliers that are either wholesale manufacturers or connected to their supply chain with specialised manufacturers that will provide us with the best items of the best quality possible in the shortest time and at a good price,” says Garcia.
“Another challenge is chain shipping. We’re trying to engage with suppliers that have great relationships that will ensure we’re quoting shipping from end to end. Sometimes we send pharmaceuticals and even blood to places where airports don’t have air conditioning and we are transporting items into the actual mission compound in a very high heat environment.
“We need to make sure that the items that we’re purchasing arrive at the place that we’re going to need them in intact condition – providing supplies efficiently and accountably helps us with demand management. We do a lot of different management and inventory management and distribution as we see it in certain compounds and then send out to different places and outflows.
For example, in Somalia, we work and we have a main office in Mogadishu, but we send out to all the clinics that we have in different sectors in Somalia. That’s why we always try to have multiple sourcing because we need to avoid supply chain disruptions. Last year with Covid, the fact that we had multiple sources for the same products and health care providers provided us with the opportunity not to have an interruption in our supply.
“We’re also looking for suppliers that are keen on innovation and align with our agenda of sustainable development so we can invest in these items, especially equipment that will help our missions for a long time.”
The UN procurement manual is publicly available and Garcia recommends downloading it and studying it carefully. It details how contracts are awarded, bidding, shelf life for products, registration on the EPR system which is mandatory to be invited to bid, in short the whole process. Also important is the UN Procurement mobile app which lists current business opportunities. She also recommends using a generic email from a company as buyers are always checking the database.
“These tools are a gateway to understanding the UN and making sure that that you can work with us,” she says. “Our idea is to be able to identify bidders from all over the world that have different solutions. It usually takes bidders two tries to be successful and win a contract because you have to learn the process and the process is complex, but please don’t lose heart. Don’t give up and understand how you can be better. If we have your names, if we know what you’re capable of doing something, we’ll invite you directly.”