Abadji T. Edith DANHIN, is a civil servant working in the National Directorate of Public Health in Benin. She currently works in the Department of Quantification and Monitoring of Health Product Supply. Her duties include reporting data from the intermediate and peripheral levels to the central level, managing alerts on health products, collecting and analyzing the needs of health products required by the public.  

After her doctorate, she began working in a pharmacy, where one of her many tasks was to make products available. She used to closely follow the arrival lists and reorder the products on her waiting list. She used to coordinate with the suppliers to ensure timely delivery.  For her, behind a quality product available in the right place at the right time is a patient saved and a family who finds their smile back.

Recently, she helped a distributor, who was unfamiliar with the procedures to obtain authorization to purchase products in the private sector that were out of stock in the public sector. He was surprised by her decisiveness and, even though it was not within the scope of her department or management, she extended her support to him. He finally got the approval, which earned ABADJI lot of praise and admiration.

She believes the major challenges in the supply chain in her country are storage conditions for healthcare products, quality of data from the peripheral facilities, out-of-stock and overstocking.  

She adds that academia does not accurately reflect the reality on the ground. She had a lot more knowledge about the private sector, which is why she decided to go into pharmacy right after her thesis.  

On her association with The Hive platform, she says, “The Hive platform can help me by continuing to organize training programs and keeping in touch with other specialists/students to allow experience sharing”

“If I could change one thing about my workplace, it would be the solidarity in getting the job done and the promptness of some of the staff,” says ABADJI.  
 As a member of Hive, she says that the platform has helped her by facilitating exchanges with other supply chain actors in her country and others (sharing experiences and knowledge) as well as by providing her with materials to improve her knowledge.