Lesotho

The USAID Global Health Supply Chain Program-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) project in Lesotho is partnering with Basotho government agencies and other key donors, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and Clinton Health Access Initiative, to promote increasingly effective supply chain management and achieve the goals of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Lesotho has increasingly recognized the importance of supply chain management in recent years, as witnessed by the establishment of the Supply Chain Coordinating Unit (SCCU) within the Ministry of Health.

GHSC-PSM is not funding any commodity procurement on Lesotho’s behalf but rather providing targeted technical assistance to the SCCU, the central medical stores, and the District Health Management Teams using private sector tools and world-class technology. As Lesotho has the world’s third-highest rate of HIV/AIDS prevalence among adults as of 2014, GHSC-PSM’s work there is primarily focused on ensuring the uninterrupted availability of HIV/AIDS commodities.  

Working through existing systems, GHSC-PSM is supporting Lesotho’s national strategies for public health supply chains to ensure the timely provision of laboratory supplies and life-saving antiretrovirals for smooth implementation of PEPFAR’s “Test and Treat” guidelines and other PEPFAR initiatives.

Test and Treat, which recommends all those tested positive for HIV be immediately started on antiretroviral therapy (ART), supports the UNAIDS 90-90-90 goals adopted by PEPFAR for 90 percent of people with HIV to be diagnosed, 90 percent of those diagnosed to be on ART, and 90 percent of those on ART to have viral suppression by 2020. In Lesotho, GHSC-PSM is focused primarily on 121 health facilities in the five PEPFAR-designated priority districts most burdened by HIV: Berea, Leribe, Mafeteng, Maseru, and Mohale’s Hoek.

Key activities in Lesotho include:

• Introduce private sector solutions with customized applications to build management capacity and enhance supply chain operations
• Support the Supply Chain Coordination Unit in piloting an informed push model, one that alleviates the supply management burden of facility-level service providers and enhances logistics data flow using tablets for facility-level data entry into a cloud-hosted database
• Place dedicated logistic professionals in SCCU, Central Medical Stores, and each priority district
• Support the Central Medical Stores in evaluating the health supply chain’s transportation routes, warehouse sizes, and locations, and with barcoding to streamline receiving/dispatch operations and improve inventory control
• Evaluate the potential use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, for distributing medical supplies and/or test samples and results to overcome transportation difficulties posed by the country’s high-altitude, rugged terrain