The COVID-19 pandemic has created acute disruptions to public health supply chains, revealing underlying vulnerabilities in the global supply ecosystem and increasing uncertainty in both the supply and demand of life-saving SRH medicines and products. A crisis of this magnitude demands that we understand what worked well, what did not, and how best to plan for the future, even as the pandemic continues.
JSI provided technical assistance to the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition to assess what about our supply chains helped ensure continuity of SRH products and services during COVID-19 and identify what we could do better moving forward.
The activity culminated in the development of the BUILDING RESILIENT SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH SUPPLY CHAINS DURING COVID-19 AND BEYOND Community Roadmap for Action and Technical Findings. This report summarizes the key findings from the assessment and lays out a community action plan to systematically strengthen end-to-end supply chains for SRH products.
Findings suggest that disruptions were most acute in the early months of the pandemic and largely supply chains largely adapted to new constraints by Q3/Q4 2020. Disruptions were most severe in freight and manufacturing sectors, and the pandemic response required rapid policy changes and adaptations to operations. As the pandemic continues, uncertainty persists and risks remain, particularly around freight (costs and reliability) and sufficient financing for RH products.
The focus of the action plan, published in April 2021, is to accelerate the adoption of practices that worked well in 2020 and also address those disruptions or weaknesses that pose the greatest threat to widespread SRH product availability in the short and long term.
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