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The health care supply chain for humanitarian aid — Medically Necessary

Who steps in during disaster scenarios?

Medically Necessary is a podcast by Matt Blois about the health care supply chain — how we get drugs, devices and medical supplies to health care providers and patients.

Under normal circumstances, health care providers simply order the supplies they need. In a disaster, the typical supply channels may not be an option, or health care providers may not be able to afford to buy products. That’s where humanitarian aid distributors come to help. 

On this episode of Medically Necessary, Matt Blois looks at how the nonprofit medical distribution organization Direct Relief operates across the U.S. and in 80 other countries around the world.

He welcomes CEO Thomas Tighe to discuss how Direct Relief helps deliver medical supplies or drugs to the sites of natural disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes, and helps deliver necessary supplies on an ongoing basis to health care providers who simply can’t afford them.
You can find more Medically Necessary episodes and recaps for all our live podcasts here.


Kaylee Nix

Kaylee Nix is a meteorologist and reporter for FreightWaves. She joined the company in November of 2020 after spending two years as a broadcast meteorologist for a local television channel in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Kaylee graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2018 and immediately made the Tennessee Valley her home. Kaylee creates written summaries of FreightWaves live podcasts and cultivates the social media for FreightWaves TV.