Analysing Public Health Issues in the Food and Pharmaceutical Supply Chain : Comprehensive Reviews and Mitigation Strategies

Focusing on and ensuring the quality and safety of foods and drugs is essential to achieve public health. Over the last decade, public health measures concerning food quality and drug safety have increased interest in supply chains and logistics operations. Against this backdrop, this dissertation reviewed and analysed the extant literature to identify gaps in studying food quality and drug safety, the proposed solutions to these issues, mitigation strategies for these consequences, and potential future research directions. The focus is on adulteration or counterfeiting issues of drugs and contamination issues of food due to their importance, seriousness, and the high-scale focus on them in recent research.

Food and drug supply chains are more complex than other supply chains. This complexity is due to the continuous changes, particularly in ensuring the quality of food and safety of drug products throughout the entire supply chain, from the supplier of raw materials to distribution to the final consumers or patients. In particular, food supply chain markets have become more highly and faster developed than other supply chains in using modern technologies like traceability and have begun to implement them in their logistical systems to ensure food quality is maintained. The main findings indicated that technological implementation enhances the efficiency and sustainability of the food and drug supply chains and helps to retain perishable food and drug characteristics.

The fight against drug counterfeiting or adulteration is more challenging than food because it poses a greater threat to public health if consumed by patients. Drug counterfeits have been an international issue for almost two decades, and the latest statistics show that fake medications will continue to penetrate legitimate pharmaceutical supply chains. Therefore, implementing traceability technologies along with the right success factors significantly influences overcoming the barriers to establishing a safe pharmaceutical supply chain.

This dissertation sought to provide cohesive information on overcoming challenges related to drug safety, using the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) model that combines Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) metrics, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). In addition, this dissertation addressed strategies to reduce adulteration and contamination rates in critical food products and maximize safety by developing an AHP model.