VAN makes huge strides in 2021

In 2021, the VAN significantly broadened its reach, showing the impressive impact a control tower can have in the public health sphere.

• Between 2020 and 2021, the VAN saw a six-fold increase in the number of governments, procurers, and suppliers with direct access to it: from 15 to almost 100.
• The VAN’s data coverage expanded in 2021 to encompass over 6,000 shipments and 5,000 orders across all contraceptive products and 136 countries.  In addition, 37 countries shared their inventory data in the VAN and 25 countries developed and uploaded their supply plans.
• The VAN’s interactive dashboards make it possible for procurers and countries to compare planned and incoming shipments against consumption and inventory, and signal discrepancies between supply plan projections and current stock levels.
• Two countries, Ghana and Malawi, successfully linked their national electronic logistics management information systems to the VAN, enabling them to track for the first time, supply flows from order request to receipt at the sub-national or facility level.

 

The VAN helped mitigate the impact of COVID and severe global funding cuts

The breadth of data accessible to VAN members, coupled with technical and analysis support from VAN Control Tower Analysts, fostered more efficient reproductive health supply chain management at global and regional levels. In 2021, in the face of the continued impact of COVID-19 and dramatic funding shortfalls, critical VAN data and analyses were used to:

• Identify a $91.8 million gap in family planning product funding, enabling UNFPA and USAID to mobilize and commit to an additional $26.3 million in new procurements, sufficient to potentially avert an estimated 2 million unintended pregnancies*.
• Expedite 29 shipments, valued at over $7.6 million, thereby ensuring stocked shelves in 17 countries.
• Reallocate $2.4 million worth of products and avoid waste by cancelling orders and supporting 17 product transfers between countries or between programs in the same country.

*once fully allocated.

 

The VAN’s 2021 impact at-a-glance

Category: Global FP VAN