Second Encuentro builds on predecessor; brings Latin American initiative closer to achieving objective

9th March 2018

Last month, we announced the inaugural “encuentro” or “learning session” in Panama City under the Coalition’s new initiative to open up global information on innovative procurement mechanisms for reproductive health supplies to South American countries. Hot on its heels, a second encuentro, held in Lima, Peru, in February convened delegations from eight South American countries - Argentina, Bolivia Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador Paraguay, and Peru. This was the first time that procurement agents from these eight countries had ever met to discuss contraceptive security and procurement.

The Encuentros initiative aims to broaden opportunities for national agencies to procure more affordable, quality RH products. The relationships and introductions fostered in the Lima encuentro have yielded remarkable results and initiated important conversations and developments: 

  • Chile’s central procurement agency (CENABAST) will call on its 10 years of experience to share lessons learned with its peers in CENARES (Perú) and exchange best practices between the two agencies. 
  • Building on lessons learned from the first encuentro, the creation of a regional price observatory agreed upon in Panama fueled discussion on establishing such an observatory for the whole region.
  • It emerged that several manufacturers do not register their products, including in FP2020 priority countries (Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua), because there is no financial incentive. 
  • Other opportunities that participants will continue to explore include: developing financial guarantees; procuring high-quality and more affordable contraceptives from Brazilian manufacturers; working with UNFPA on securing regional pooled procurements for contraceptives; and establishing a regional team that could negotiate better prices for contraceptive products on behalf of a few countries. 

For more information, please contact Milka Dinev at mdinev@rhsupplies.org.

Categories: Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Nicaragua, ForoLAC

You are currently offline. Some pages or content may fail to load.