In this interview, Colonel Qazi Ullah, Deputy Chief for Integrated Support Services at UNMIL and a Bangladeshi military logistician. Colonel Ullah begins by describing the initial challenges of coordinating the logistics of a 35-agency response effort for Ebola. He then details a variety of specific logistics problems he dealt with and the innovative solutions he and his team were able to design, relating to issues such as Priority Procurement Lists for donors, warehouse management, shipping and helicopters, and cold storage challenges for medical supplies. Finally, Col. Ullah concludes by reflecting on the overall logistical successes in the management of the Ebola crisis, offering lessons learned and best practices going forward.
Colonel Qazi Ullah is a Bangladeshi military logistics officer and the Deputy Chief for Integrated Support Services at the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). Prior to joining UNMIL, he held a variety of assignments relating to logistics, natural disaster response, and national emergency response for the Bangladeshi army. He also was stationed at the UN Mission in Sierra Leone, and did a first tour at UNMIL before being assigned as a military advisor to the UN Mission for West Africa in Senegal, after which he returned to UNMIL to assume his current post in January of 2014. At UNMIL, his main responsibilities encompassed all logistical coordination for the multi-agency response to Ebola, when he simultaneously worked for UNMIL and was seconded to the Liberian Ministry of Health, coordinating resources and supply chain management for the Ebola response for over 35 different multinational partner agencies.