Helping protect communities against a life-threatening disease

As a long-standing hub for nongovernmental organizations and public health entities, Europe is pioneering initiatives that enhance health outcomes well beyond its borders.

McKinsey works with public health stakeholders around the world to strengthen critical health system supply chains, resulting in improved access to care and preventive health measures. In recent years, we have helped a global donor-funded organization map challenges and opportunities to optimize supply chains for critical malaria countermeasures. Malaria is a life-threatening disease prevalent in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and accounted for over half a million deaths in 2022, 80% of which were of children five years old or younger.

As a key global player in the procurement and distribution of malaria prevention products, our client was encountering several challenges in its supply chain, including difficulty delivering the product to at-risk populations in remote areas and limited funding for disease control strategies.

We supported our client in developing an approach to drive impact across three dimensions: 1) reducing time from initial order to last-mile delivery, 2) identifying ways to reduce excess costs, and 3) reducing the carbon footprint of distribution to minimize potential climate-change-driven disease transmission escalation.

With the client, we:

• Created a detailed value stream map of product distribution with the key criteria of cost, time, and environmental impact in three case study LMICs in collaboration with local consulting partners
• Identified impact opportunities across the key criteria at each stage of the supply chain
• Drafted an implementation plan through a collective, co-creation process with the client and other key stakeholders

• First-of-its-kind evaluation: Delivered a first-of-its-kind comprehensive multi-dimension evaluation of health commodity supply chains for countries with some of the highest risk of disease transmission. This evaluation was released at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28)
• Carbon emission reduction: Identified opportunities to abate carbon emissions from distribution by 25–40% at net neutral cost, or by up to 50% at a cost increase of ~4%, to mitigate the potential escalation of disease transmission driven by climate change
• Long-Term Supply Chain Improvement: Helped the client address supply chain issues for years to come, contributing to their ultimate goal of malaria elimination