UNFPA Supplies: New name for an old friend
3rd February 2016
As UNFPA’s Global Programme transitions to the new name, UNFPA Supplies, we celebrate their contributions to our partnership and explore many of the successes behind their motto, “Children by Choice, Not by Chance”. When the Programme was launched in 2007, many saw it as complementing the neutral convening space of the Coalition’s roundtable. With “feet on the ground” now in more than 46 countries, its work resonated with the neutral convening space of our global roundtable. Since then, the Global Programme, now “UNFPA Supplies”, has grown to become the largest procurer of contraceptive supplies in the world. UNFPA Supplies’ work over the past 10 years clearly demonstrates its commitment to ensuring that women and adolescent girls have access to a choice of family planning methods and accurate information.
For the Coalition, UNFPA Supplies is an indispensable partner.
For the Coalition, UNFPA Supplies is an indispensable partner. Our collaboration with UNFPA Supplies has allowed us to take to scale so many tools and initiatives conceived of under the auspices of our working groups – from AccessRH and the RH Interchange to the CARhs and the CSP. These are some of the mighty oaks…
The Reproductive Health Interchange (RHI)
The Reproductive Health Interchange (RHI), created in 2004, provides timely, up-to-date information on contraceptive orders and shipments for more than 140 countries. Now hosted and maintained by UNFPA Supplies, the RHI reflects over 80 per cent of contraceptive supplies provided by donors, worth more than $2.3 billion.
AccessRH
Initially developed under the Systems Strengthening Working Group, AccessRH delivers quality-assured commodities quickly and at highly competitive prices. Since 2013, AccessRH has delivered almost 60 per cent of all contraceptive implants sold under the new volume guarantees with manufacturers Bayer and Merck.
Coordinated Assistance for RH Supplies (CARhs)
Since 2005, the Coordinated Assistance for Reproductive Health Supplies (CARhs) group has provided a platform for global procurers and other partners to resolve country-level supply crises, be they stock shortfalls or overstocks. UNFPA Supplies has been an integral member of the CARhs since its inception.
In 2014 alone, UNFPA Supplies, through CARhs resolved several major contraceptive crises. It partnered with the Female Condom Company and transferred 1.4 million female condoms to resolve a stockout at the Kenya Central Medical Store. It averted an imminent shortfall of DMPA and oral contraceptives in Myanmar by donating more than 1.1 million oral contraceptives and 550,000 units of DMPA. And finally in Nepal, UNFPA resolved a supply crisis ’s quick action made it possible to expedite more than 1.75 million units of DMPA to the Ministry of Health.
The Coordinated Supply Planning Group (CSP)
The Coordinated Supply Planning Group, or CSP, is a partnership between UNFPA and USAID forged from within the Coalition’s CARhs group. CSP improves supply chain coordination for family planning commodities earlier in the procurement process. It does so by developing forecasts and supply plans amongst the major donors and the countries they support. In 2015, UNFPA mobilized funding for an additional 628,000 contraceptive implants, and expedited 454,600 implants through the CSP partnership.
Take Stock
UNFPA was an early supporter of the Coalition’s work to develop the Universal Stockout Indicator, and this year, it provided stockout data to FP2020 using this indicator. With UNFPA’s support, the global health community moved from having no easily comparable stock data to having data from 14 countries published in the 2015 FP2020 Annual Report. For its successful efforts to forge a common language on stockouts, the Coalition named UNFPA Supplies the 2015 Take Stock Champion.