Description of Session
We share lessons from the 6-year journey of piloting to nationally scaling an eLMIS system for Senegal called “Yeksi-Naa”. Since 2013, IntraHealth and Dimagi have partnered in Senegal to implement the Informed Push Model (IPM) with Senegal’s Ministry of Health and Social Action (MoHSA) and National Supply Pharmacy (PNA). Before Yeksi-Naa, local health facilities were tasked with procuring commodities from district warehouses (“pulling”), paying upfront and without training or information for accurate forecasting. Yeksi-Naa was able to transform the supply chain system in Senegal through improved system design by moving to sending commodities to facilities (“push”), outsourcing distribution from public to third party logisticians (3PLs), enhancing real-time data visibility using tablet based eLMIS (i.e. CommCare), and increasing financial viability by moving to post-consumption payments by health facilities. CommCare is used at national scale for distribution of 118 essential medicines at 1,446 supply points in the country, covering public supply chains, including Malaria, HIV, Tuberculosis among other essential medicines. The program plans to achieve full transition to the government by August 2019. The program started with an initial pilot testing the distribution of 40 family planning products. The pilot contributed to impressive success on key health indicators over a 5 year span between 2012 and 2017: - decreased unmet need for family planning products from 29% to 22%; - increased mCPR from 12% to 26%; - decreased average contraceptive stock out rates from 80% to 1.87%. This success led to IPM-Yeksi Naa and CommCare being nationally accepted by the MoHSA and PNA with support from national program partners. The program was expanded to include 118 essential medicines. Dimagi and IntraHealth have been engaged in co-designing a hand over to the government in order for Yeksi-Naa to be a fully nationally owned program.
