On January 2, 2015, IntraHealth International will launch a new 12-month project to help reduce stockouts in rural Kenya and improve availability of reproductive health commodities, including contraceptives, medicines to treat HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections, and equipment to help women deliver babies safely.

Funded by the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition’s Innovation Fund, the Improving Reproductive Health Commodity Management Project will help build capacity throughout the health sector to budget for commodities and monitor supply chain management performance.

High-quality family planning and other reproductive health services depend on the availability of supplies at health facilities. Yet all too often needed supplies are out of stock, particularly in rural and remote communities. The health commodity supply chain is often one of the weakest links in the health system and hampers Kenya’s ability to meet its national health goals. For example, a woman in Kenya on average has 4.5 children and the country is trying to reduce this amount to 2.6 by 2030. 

Kenyan women face a 1 in 55 lifetime risk of maternal death, and the country’s unmet need for family planning is 25.6%. Adult HIV prevalence is 6%.

A critical gap in the supply chain is the reliance on pharmacists—of which there is a shortage—to function as the supply chain managers in health facilities. Kenya needs to train other cadres of health workers, including nurses and clinical officers to perform this role. While some reproductive health commodity management training programs exist in Kenya, they are based in urban areas and consist of traditional face-to-face training, which disrupts health care services by removing supply chain managers from their facilities.

The project will develop an eLearning course and provide mentoring for 900 supply chain managers to learn how to budget for commodities and monitor supply chain management performance. The course will target health sector workers in the rural North Rift Region.

IntraHealth will work in collaboration with county government stakeholders, the Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies, and the Kenya Medical Supplies Agency and leverage existing family planning training networks already established through FUNZOKenya, an IntraHealth-led project funded by the United States Agency for International Development.

Meshack Ndolo, IntraHealth’s country director for Kenya, will lead the project and Josephine Mbiyu will be the deputy director.