Abstract
In early 2021, John Snow, Inc. (JSI) and the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC) issued a report, Building resilient sexual and reproductive health supply chains during COVID-19 and beyond: community roadmap for action and technical findings (referred to here as the ‘Roadmap report’) to promote more resilient supply chains and markets for reproductive health products in the face of COVID-19. The Roadmap
report contains a series of broad, far-reaching recommendations in the areas of market dynamics, financing, supply chain strategies, policies and
stewardship, and data visibility and access. One primary message in the Roadmap report was the increased competition for scarce resources. Since
early 2020, many in the Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) community have expressed concern that funding for contraceptives would be deprioritized due to diversion of funds towards COVID-19 response efforts, and to cover higher supply chain expenses (e.g., freight). Concerns have been voiced over the potential for these competing demands to undermine domestic and donor spending in the near- to long-term.
In order to better understand the current status and trends in funding for contraceptives, and underlying drivers, RHSC commissioned Avenir Health in May 2022 to conduct a deep analysis of the status of contraceptive funding across a wide range of LMICs. This analysis seeks to identify changes in budget allocation and spending on contraceptives before and during the pandemic period, as well as the underlying drivers for these changes (COVID-19 and otherwise).
