Humanitarian Logistics (HL) is becoming a serious theme for researchers. There are many conferences dedicated to this. Recently, IIM Raipur (in India) hosted a conference on this theme. It is important to note that :

a) Developing and emerging economies are faced with the problems related to natural disasters such as earthquakes,cyclones, floods, drought etc. More so due to poor or inadequate infrastructure.

b) The issues such as responsiveness and timely reach of the rescue aid and help is a big challenge ,

c) IT has played a significant role in addressing these issues.

d) A recent example of Odisha (state in India) cyclone where timely warning played a significant role in mitigating the damage .

What determines HL in scm are the following factors:

a) The huge stakes involved in every chain of the supply chain

b) The idea that every link is connected to the other link in the entire supply chain , more so in HL since here we are dealing literally with life and death of teh stakeholders

c) The basic issues of managing both material flow (related to emergency rescue aid, food supplies, medicines etc.) and the information flow(about the natural; calamity, the way the info is to be transmitted and to be acted upon etc.)

Not sure what is exactly meant by "but seldom being mentioned in most of the logistics and supply chain operations". As far as I can see there is a host of literature but I would agree that the subject is perhaps not well represented in academic curricula. Perhaps have a look at the following literature review:

http://www.humanitarianhealthcarelogistics.com/resources.htm

When Disaster strikes, All actors or what is referred to as the Humanitarian Supply Chain is activated. Depending on the nature and size of disaster, Emergency relief will be needed and this basically has to be transported. As you may be aware, transport is critical in Emergency management. Any delays in transporting relief items will increase suffering. This is what makes Humanitarian Logistics an important factor- to save lives and restore normal functioning.

Humanitarian logistics basically states the need for development of strategies for rescue and relief operations such as cyclones,  earthquakes,  floods etc. Important elements are responsiveness (organising the delivery)  and time to the affected area and people. Thus,  topic is of great interest and their is a need to develop models which optimizer or handle both material and information flow among various entities. 

We have a developed a course Humanitarian Logistics & Supply Chain Management which will use Case Studies. Please share in this humanitarian academics. [email protected] You can see us on research gate also

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Thank u Hermann. When I started to ask this question, it did not cross my mind too about any pendemic that can cause serious problem to our logistics and supply chain. But during the H1N1 crisis, there are serious supply operations of raw materials or even transportation that involved public transport in the countries affected by this pendemic. It is a good study then on how the control was done. With current Covid-19 crisis we can see now how serious the humanitarian logistics should be actively operational and implemented. Thank u again for reminding us in this forum about this pendemic.

Why not u share some of that experience related to the corruptions issues in our logistics supply chain operations? That may bring some new perspective but old issues that are not focused all this while. Indeed in humanitarian logistics issues such as supplies did not reach the destination or hijack during wars, feminine, pendemic etc are quite rampant from the newspapers report. But it has minimum studies on these issues.