Global Health Areas

Key commodities include:
 

• Injectable contraceptives
• Implantable contraceptives
• Combined oral contraceptives
• Copper-bearing intrauterine devices
• Emergency oral contraceptives
• Progestin only pills
• Male condoms
• Female condoms
• Fertility-based awareness methods
• Hormone-releasing intrauterine
• Other related commodities

With the launch of Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) at the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning, the global community set a goal of enabling 120 million additional women and girls in the world’s 69 poorest countries to access and use contraception by 2020. Since then, nearly half of these target countries have made commitments to address the policy, financing, delivery, and sociocultural barriers to women accessing contraceptive information. The GHSC-PSM project is committed to supporting USAID’s goal of accelerating progress toward reaching 120 million new users through the project’s focus on commodity procurement and system strengthening.

GHSC-PSM works to build and maintain strategic partnerships and to support USAID’s leadership among key stakeholders in the global community. Most notable in the reproductive health arena is the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition, where GHSC-PSM was elected to chair the Systems Strengthening Working Group and is committed to supporting the Coalition’s campaign to end contraceptive stockouts, Take Stock.

Regionally, GHSC-PSM anticipates supporting partnerships in West Africa, where contraceptive prevalence rates are the lowest in the world. The Ouagadougou Partnership, formed in 2011, is working to revitalize efforts toward its goal of reaching at least 2.2 million additional family planning methods users by 2020 in the nine Francophone Africa countries, while the West Africa Health Organization is likewise rising to prominence in the area. GHSC-PSM strives to leverage these collaborations to develop and implement innovations in commodity procurement and distribution.

• Procurement Planning and Monitoring Report (PPMR)
• Contraceptive Indicators
• Contraceptive Index

GHSC-PSM provides assistance that is targeted to support countries in meeting their unique procurement and supply chain challenges and, in some cases, to cut the cost of doing so. We work with suppliers of pharmaceuticals (antiretrovirals [ARVs] and essential medicines), male circumcision commodities, and laboratory instruments and commodities to reach this goal. The project collaborates with the Global Health Supply Chain-Rapid Test Kits (GHSC-RTK) project by providing country quantifications of demand for test kits. GHSC-PSM also works with Global Health Supply Chain-Quality Assurance (GHSC-QA) to ensure the quality of all HIV-related commodities.

Led by PEPFAR, UNAIDS, WHO, and others global stakeholders, many HIV/AIDS programs are transitioning to a new antiretroviral drug regimen, TLD (tenofovir, lamivudine, dolutegravir). GHSC-PSM is playing a vital role in supporting HIV/AIDS programs in managing their transition to TLD.

Our project teams work in 24 countries, providing a mix of technical assistance and/or commodity procurement support to strengthen local capacity in HIV supply chains. Building on a decade of work by USAID, PEPFAR, and implementing partners, our teams work with local partners to provide new approaches to strategic planning, logistics, data visibility and analytics, and capacity building.

Current country and regional presence includes: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Caribbean, Central America, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Haiti, Indonesia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Key commodities include:

• First-line adult antiretroviral medicines (ARVs)
• Second-line adult antiretroviral medicines (ARVs)
• First-line pediatric antiretroviral medicines (ARVs)
• All laboratory commodities
• Condoms
• Voluntary medical male circumcision
• Other related commodities

GHSC-PSM supports bold targets set by the U.S. government in 2015 for PEPFAR to support 12.9 million people with life-saving antiretroviral treatment and 13 million men with male circumcision by the end of 2017.

Specifically, our project advances PEPFAR’s work to support partner countries to rapidly adopt and implement World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for “Test and Start” as well as more efficient service delivery models. These WHO guidelines are designed to prevent new HIV infections, save more lives, and accelerate progress toward the UNAIDS 90-90-90 goals for 2020:

• 95 percent of people with HIV diagnosed
• 95 percent of those diagnosed on antiretroviral treatment (ART)
• 95 percent of those on ART virally suppressed

GHSC-PSM contributes to each of the 95-95-95 targets through procurement and technical assistance. We collaborate closely with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through USAID to harmonize approaches, such as procurement of viral load instruments.

We also work with our country programs to ensure that the most recent information about new ARVs and the most effective ARV regimens is informing their work with ministries of health. 

GHSC-PSM works to build and maintain strategic partnerships and to support USAID’s leadership among key stakeholders in the global community. Most notable in the HIV/AIDS arena are partnerships with The Global Fund, the World Health Organization, the African Society for Laboratory Medicine, and consortia such as the Antiretroviral Procurement Working Group and initiatives such as the UNITAID-funded Point of Care Early Infant Diagnosis Partner Consortium.

The project’s market dynamics efforts aim to further shape and strengthen the market for ARVs, HIV rapid test kits, viral load laboratory equipment and supplies, and other key commodities. Based on needs identified by market dynamics analysis, GHSC-PSM also advocates for changes in policy and practice.

The project contributes to the U.S. government’s goal of ensuring access to medicines and supplies where and when women and children need them, established under the U.N. Commission on Life Saving Commodities for Women and Children. The project contributes to and participates in related technical discussions and working groups, such as the Maternal Health Supplies Caucus of the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition, Postpartum Hemorrhage Community of Practice, The Every Newborn Action Plan (ENAP), Medical Commodities and Technologies, Technical Working Group (TWG), and The Child Health Task Force. GHSC-PSM closely collaborates with other USAID programs including but not limited to The Medicines, Technologies, and Pharmaceutical Services (MTaPS) Program and Promoting the Quality of Medicines Plus (PQM+) Program.

In all countries, the project prioritizes coordination with national programs and technical working groups to develop strategies that incorporate MNCH issues. GHSC-PSM also collaborates with other in-country partners, service delivery projects and key stakeholders to ensure MNCH commodities are available when and where they are needed.

 Strong supply chains also enable countries to better manage emerging threats to mothers and newborns, such as the Zika outbreak in Central and South America and the Caribbean. GHSC-PSM began supporting Zika response and preparedness efforts in 2017. In addition to emergency procurement of commodities to reduce Zika transmission, the project has conducted emergency supply chain workshops in the region using the Emergency Supply Chain Playbook.

For a summary of GHSC-PSM’s MNCH work, download our fact sheet or visit our Improving Maternal and Child Health key initiative page.

• PPH Commodity Resource Page: A comprehensive guide outlining the indications and supply chain considerations for PPH-related medicines.
• Manual for Procurement and Supply of Quality-Assured Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Commodities: Comprehensive guide for national governments and procurement agents (also in French and Spanish)
• End-Use Verification Survey Toolkit: For data collectors tracing use of critical MNCH commodities to inform health supply chain decision-making
• GHSC-PSM Global Standards resource hub, which includes and these useful considerations for national governments procuring MNCH commodities, Global Standards in LLMICs: Policy Design Considerations to Address Domestic Manufacturer Needs

As part of broader maternal and child health programs, GHSC-PSM supports the availability of Zika prevention products in public and private services by:
 

• Creating Global Connections
  • Technical leadership to strengthen global demand and financing
  • Improving the provision of health commodities through global commodity procurement and logistics
  • Facilitating global collaboration to engage strategically to improve long-term global supply of health commodities
• Country Systems Strengthening
  • Strengthening supply systems and supportive environments for health commodity security
  • Technical assistance to strengthen in-country supply chain systems
     

Current activities focus on 7 countries which include: Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, and Nicaragua.

West Africa was hard hit by the Ebola outbreak, especially Guinea, where unusable medical and pharmaceutical (UMPP) disposal procedures and capacity are not fully developed for the treatment and disposal of UMPP waste.

GHSC-PSM is working with the Ministry of Health in Guinea to develop a waste management and reverse logistics strategy for Ebola-related commodities.