By Bontle Motsoatsoe

This study by Stop Stockouts Project and civil society organisation Section 27 also found that poor national procurement planning remains the main driver of the shortages and stockouts of contraceptives.

 

Section 27 Executive Director, Sasha Stevenson says, “There are various causes for the stockouts and I should also say that there has been an improvement over the years in Stockouts. So, the Stop Stockouts Project started measuring medicine availability in 2013-and we’ve seen real improvements, so that’s something we must definitely celebrate.”

“As the report finds, we’ve also seen that contraceptives are the most reported out-of-stock item and this remains a real problem, and part of that problem is that a lot of places still have manual ordering systems, and so where you have a paper-based system, you are going to have a lot of inefficiencies,” says Stevenson.

--SABC--