Thank you Program Director, Shabana Farooqi

Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to be here today on behalf of USAID to launch the five year Global Health Supply Chain program.

This program was awarded to PricewaterhouseCoopers to continue providing supply chain systems strengthening support to the government through PEPFAR, with the ultimate goal of expanding health coverage and achieving an AIDS-free generation.

The conceptualization and design of this project has been a partnership between the Department of Health and USAID. For that, I’d like to thank Gavin Steel, Chief Director: Sector wide Procurement and his team for availing themselves and investing their time in providing the strategic vision, and on-boarding the new project over the past few months.

It is only through this close partnership that we can hope to ensure the sustained availability of medicine for the largest antiretroviral program in the world.

We have come a long way in the partnership that began nearly 20 years ago, with the EQUITY was a project working primarily in the Eastern Cape. Since that time, we have made many great strides together in laying foundations for pharmaceutical systems.

In 1997, implementation of the use of bin cards was a key intervention to enable the planning and tracking for health commodities within health facilities.  This was followed by the development of electronic systems such PharMIS and RxStore, which later evolved into RxSolution.

The recent introduction of Stock Visibility Solution in nearly 3500 clinic across the country was another milestone in gaining better visibility on medicine availability.  PEPFAR will continue to work with the department to turn the purple to green on the SVS dashboards through this project and our district support partners.

All these investments provide a platform for the Department of Health to maintain the availability of the right health products by providing end-to-end visibility, business intelligence and predictive modelling to improve decision making.

In 2013, the Department successfully transitioned to a fixed dose combination regimen, a mammoth task which was managed seamlessly. A new level of reliability and agility will be demanded of the healthcare supply chain, however, in order to prepare for and transition to newer first line options such Dolutegravir,

Gavin Steel, Chief Director: Sector Wide Procurement of South African National Department of Health

USAID/Southern Africa

Capitalizing on the Global Health Supply Chain Program’s private sector expertise, the project will facilitate implementation of industry leading procurement and distribution practices. The design and implementation of a Visibility and Analytics Network and other innovations to facilitate the management of these transitions as well the massive scale up driven by the Universal Test and Treat.

The project will also work with national and provincial counterparts to stay at the cutting edge of health technologies, including the synthesis of efficacy and cost data to help ensure the South African government is obtaining new medicines at the right price

None of these things can be achieved without the leadership and unwavering commitment of the people in this room.

We will therefore lean on the continued leadership and collaboration with the Department of Health, both National and Provincial counterparts in achieving our shared goals.

Thank you again, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with all of you.