The USAID Global Health Supply Chain Program-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) project – established in Lesotho in 2016 with a budget of $5.5 million – strengthens the country’s health commodity supply chain. In collaboration with the Ministry of Health, the project is expanding electronic data collection, and providing technical assistance in supply chain forecasting, inventory management, and planning and distribution. These strategies have improved access to health supplies by making supply chain records more readily available, reducing data errors, and improving productivity at the central warehouse. The result is an increasingly optimized health commodity supply chain that brings long-term time and cost savings.
One of the program’s most impactful activities to date has been the expansion of the “informed push” system nationwide, which uses electronic data to manage Lesotho’s health commodity supply chain. This automated system allows health facility staff to use electronic tablets to upload information about health commodity stock currently at the facility, and quantities of stock received from the central warehouse.
By connecting to the National Ministry of Health’s web-based platform for health records, the system automatically calculates the quantity of new supplies the facility needs to ensure a continuous supply of critical health commodities and minimal waste of unused supplies. This alleviates the burden felt by often understaffed facilities to manually enter stock data into paper-based records and forecast supply needs.
