Statement by the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi - On the occasion of the launch of the Stock Visibility System for the improved access and availability of essential medicines in South Africa
14 July 2016
South Africa has the world's largest antiretroviral treatment (ART) programme with an estimated 3.1 million people receiving treatment as of the end of March 2015. In May this year, the new “Test and Treat” antiretroviral (ARV) treatment strategy as announced and as a result, we expect this number to increase and in turn this will place pressure on our medicine supply systems to deliver the volumes of treatment needed to cater for our people's treatment needs.
In a move aimed at improving health systems performance at all primary health care clinics, the National Department of Health (NDoH), has developed a system, in partnership with Vodacom, to monitor the availability of medicines at clinic level. The mobile-based Stock Visibility System (‘SVS’) is able to provide real-time information on the availability of medicines in primary health care (PHC) clinics thereby preventing stock-outs or shortage of medicines at facilities when there is adequate stock in the district or province.
This strategic approach which will bolster the strength of the public health care supply chain and is being implemented as part of the phased implementation of the National Health Insurance (NHI) that is focused on ensuring that everyone has access to appropriate, efficient, affordable and quality health services as well as access to essential medicine. Access to medicines implies continuous availability and affordability of medicines at health facilities which are close to where people live.
Public health sector medicine supply chains globally are currently affected by sporadic and recurring challenges with medicine availability. In South Africa, stock-outs also occur at health facilities from time to time. They are more common at primary health care (PHC) clinics than at hospitals. These challenges are mostly underpinned by weak demand planning and order management and an overall lack of an effective medicine availability information system.