rhsupplies.org

Prevailing Through Adversity

A year of collective courage and resolve

"There was no precedent, no preparation, no planning or language to explain this in a way that would make sense."

Nelly Munyasia, Executive Director, Reproductive Health Network Kenya, on the US government’s unexpected announcement in January of a 90-day freeze on US foreign aid.

We helped our members make sense of it all

This year began with the shock announcement of US funding cuts and the dismantling of USAID, leaving the reproductive health community reeling. RHSC helped members navigate this rapidly changing landscape.

Calling on our convening power and our role as a data steward, we brought key partners together to pool data telling a unified story about the impact of US government policy shifts on family planning. We offered a roadmap to understand the needs of 394 million users of modern contraception in a world without US government contributions.

Key findings continue to support conversations with partners and donors around critical next steps. Results informed the International Conference on Family Planning Future of Family Planning Convening in Washington, DC, in March 2025, setting out ways in which countries, donors, and key actors could advocate to both fill the gap and think through a longer term, more sustainable way of funding reproductive health (RH) supplies. This narrative was shared widely and informed the agenda at the International Conference on Family Planning in Bogotá.

RHSC launched RH Alerts to provide a trusted source of unbiased, accurate and transparent information. This series of short-term crisis responses provided timely updates on USAID award closeouts, product movement, access to key forecasting tools, and estimated impacts on the countries most at risk.

Former USAID and GHSC-PSM countries facing supply chain challenges needed a safety net and found it with a group of agencies including RHSC working together. We connected countries and partners to help expedite processes and ensure millions of dollars’ worth of stocks made it to where they needed to be, and supported country governments to complete critical health system strengthening activities.

With funding cuts reshaping the landscape, we continued to improve and deliver data. The 2024 Contraceptive Social Marketing and Social Business Statistics Report provided a vital pre-funding-cut baseline on social marketing organizations and social businesses, highlighting their role in increasing reproductive health supply access. And the 2024 Family Planning Market Report, co-launched with CHAI, reflects public-sector procurement trends from 2020-2024 with qualitative insights on the 2025 funding outlook following the dismantling of USAID and the expected impact of these funding shifts. Again, this was an important baseline for understanding the family planning market immediately before these significant changes.

With a long-term commitment to strengthening the financing landscape for supplies, RHSC has launched an initiative to help countries better understand and secure financing for reproductive health supplies. A new Technical Advisory Group comprising experts from diverse regions and sectors is steering the development of a financing tool for country-level decision-makers. The tool will map co-financing options, clarify eligibility criteria, and provide tailored recommendations for sustainable funding based on individual countries’ health financing context.

It will also feature advocacy resources that highlight the health and economic returns of investing in RH supplies. Through this work, RHSC is strengthening countries’ ability to plan, fund, and manage their reproductive health supplies—and reaffirming its role as a sector leader.

Our 15-year commitment to the LAC region continues, undiminished

At a time when national and regional development averages in Latin America and the Caribbean hid stark internal disparities, RHSC looked beyond this “tyranny of averages” and committed to addressing the region’s inequities in supply access. Today, 15 years on, our vision and commitment to the region remain as strong as ever.

ForoLAC had a strong presence at the International Conference on Family Planning in Bogotá, in November, co-hosting “Lessons Learned from Latin America and the Caribbean,” an interactive session with UNFPA LACRO, PAHO, and Fos Feminista. The business intelligence tool SEPREMI was showcased as a regional success story, drawing strong interest from nearly 60 participants, including governments yet to engage with SEPREMI. ForoLAC used the in-person setting to an advantage to introduce RHSC’s market-based approaches to menstrual health to a Francophone African audience for the first time. The conference afforded ForoLAC members the space to build deeper connections, introduce LAC governments and social marketing organizations to key distributors, and catalyze new partnerships — strengthening collective efforts at a critical moment for the region.

Building on work initiated by the UNFPA Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (LACRO) and the UNFPA Argentina Country Office, ForoLAC has partnered with them and subgrantee CEDES to support eight provinces in Argentina in procuring essential SRH supplies at greater scale and strengthening their supply chain management. The result? We helped secure a $26 million annual commitment to procure and distribute essential medicines, including RH supplies, for vulnerable communities in the Province of Buenos Aires, alongside the launch of Medicamentos Bonaerenses, a program that will oversee the province’s entire medical supply chain from procurement to dispensation.

Across Argentina, eight provinces now have dedicated SRH procurement and supply chain teams equipped with up-to-date data, technical resources, and digital tools that enable data-driven procurement decisions. Additionally, three provinces now invest their own budgets to strengthen supply chain capacities in line with jointly developed improvement plans.

In Bolivia, RHSC support helped strengthen the national procurement agency CEASS’s standing as a reliable source of affordable, high-quality sexual and reproductive health products. CEASS updated its procedures to improve the timely delivery of reproductive health medicines and introduced good storage practice guidelines across its nine regional warehouses. Seven of these warehouses have now reached 85 per cent compliance with national pharmaceutical storage standards.

In addition, a marketing strategy is now in place to increase demand for products and services among regional health authorities and municipalities, many of which have resumed placing orders through CEASS. The far-reaching impacts are likely to include stronger trust across the health system, improved supplier negotiations, rising demand from subnational authorities, and, ultimately, greater access to affordable, quality health products.

We made the case for market-based approaches for menstrual health — and improved visibility within menstrual product markets

RHSC is a leading voice on market-based approaches to menstrual health, working to build a resilient ecosystem of suppliers, retailers, and consumers so that menstrual products are accessible, reliable, and affordable long after individual programs or campaigns end.

The Menstrual Health Supplies Workstream produced a new theory of change and corresponding advocacy messaging and resources to make the case for market-based approaches to menstrual health. These resources advocate for a shift in the way that menstrual health programs are developed, funded, and sustained, and are available in English and Spanish, with a French translation underway.

In partnership with Menstrual Health Action for Impact (MHAi), we developed an advocacy toolkit – to be launched soon - to support a wide range of stakeholders, including advocates, with adaptable advocacy messages that make the case for why product standards are needed. The toolkit also guides advocates through opportunities to engage with National Standards Bodies and the International Organization of Standardization to ensure that global product standards reflect the needs and realities of low- and middle-income countries and, once developed, that countries are well-positioned to adopt and enforce them. In early 2026, MHAi will build on this work to update the Menstrual Product Standards Database, featuring standards for washable and disposable pads, cups, and tampons.

RHSC launched an initiative to identify key cost drivers of menstrual products, examining taxes on imported and locally manufactured items, including raw materials and equipment. Through a partnership with Mann Global Health, the project will include an in-depth analysis of the regulatory environments in India and Kenya as well as an adaptable methodology and tool to assess the potential impact of different fiscal reforms on product affordability and cost to end-users. In turn, this will help advocates make the case for meaningful reform, as well as manufacturers and suppliers navigating complex regulations, and policymakers wishing to improve equitable access to affordable products.

To help improve visibility into menstrual health markets and identify opportunities to increase access to menstrual health products, RHSC presented LEAP results as well as a framework for market-based approaches to menstrual health at the 6th Latin American Meeting on Menstrual Health in Lima, Peru. This was pioneering work in menstrual health for RHSC in the LAC region, helping lay the groundwork for including new health areas in LAC. A similar presentation was also made during ICFP 2025, targeting Francophone countries in West Africa.

We continued to lay important groundwork for regional manufacturing

RHSC’s landscape analysis of maternal health product manufacturing in sub-Saharan Africa, conducted through our Compass Initiative, helped to get these products included in the pilot of the Africa CDC's African Pooled Procurement Mechanism (APPM) by which the Africa CDC and partners hope to implement pooled procurement for health products on a large scale across the continent. The pilot included 10 Sexual, Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health products, including contraceptives, across 10 countries. Africa CDC’s long-term goals for pooled procurement are to support greater access to quality, affordable products and support local and regional manufacturers. It is critical that reproductive and maternal health products be included in such initiatives across the continent, so that gradual transformation of the African public health ecosystem includes these health areas.

RHSC’s impact in 2025 was $29M in leveraged funds and cost savings for reproductive health commodity security

For every dollar spent by RHSC in 2025, we generated almost three times as much for RH commodity security—making it possible to reach more women and girls with reproductive health supplies.