Question NW3039 to the Minister of Health

Reply:

It is the Departments of Health’s policy to ensure that women have uninterrupted access to quality safe contraceptives that allow them to choose which one best suit their personal circumstances.

The National Department of Health (NDOH) manages contracts for approximately 1 200 line items including contraceptives. Thus, in ensuring that sufficient stock is available at facilities, a number of interventions have been implemented. These interventions are informed by the cause of the supply challenge.

• Where the supply constraint is due to operational matters, re is a delay e.g. machine breakdown, labour unrest, theft, post importation testing, etc., the NDOH would source products from alternative local suppliers with registered products using the quotation process.
• Should the supply constraint result in a longer term supply challenge, such as regulatory matters including amendments to the dossier that requires approval from South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA), including a change/addition of an active pharmaceutical ingredient source and/or manufacturing site, the transfer of ownership of dossiers which results in a change of marketing authorization, delays in the issuing of the permits for imported medicines, manufactured products requiring additional quality checks by SAHPRA, etc. and no alternative local suppliers with registered products are available; an application would be made to SAHPRA for the acquisition of unregistered medicines for human use in South Africa Act use in terms of Section 21 of the Medicines and Related Substances Act.
• During the contracting for medicines, it is a special contractual condition that suppliers provide the NDoH with information related to their buffer stock holding, plans within the pipeline and data related to deliveries made to facilities. The DoH uses this information to manage supplier performance including the imposition of penalties where appropriate. Furthermore, the data is used for planning purposes including demand and supply planning.

Medicine availability is monitored using supplier and provincial level data and this allows visibility of stock availability and as such allows for risk mitigation by the National Department of Health.

END.